Represen tation

Key Concepts in Political Science

GENERAL EDITOR: Leonard Schapiro
EXECUTIVE EDITOR: Peter Calvert

Other titles in the same series include:

ALREADY PUBLISHED
Martin Albrow Bureaucracy
Peter Calvert Revolution
Brian Chapman Police State
loan Davies Social Mobility and
Political Change
Joseph Frankel National Interest
P. H. Partridge Consent and Consensus
John Plamenatz Ideology
John Rees Equality
Paul Wilkinson Social Movement
IN PREPARATION
Karl Deutsch Legitimacy
S. E. Finer Dictatorship
C. J. Friedrich Tradition and Authority
Geoffrey Goodwin International Society
Julius Gould Violence
E. Kamenka and
Alice Erh-Soon Tay Law
J. F. Lively Democracy
Robert Orr Liberty
Leonard Schapiro Totalitarianism
Henry Tudor Political Myth
Representation

A. H. Birch
Uniwrsity of Exeter

Macmillan Education
 © I97I by Pall Mall Press Ltd, London.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
without permission.

First published by Pall Mall Press Ltd, I97I

Published in the United States of America in 1971

by Praeger Publishers Inc.

This edition published in

1972 by
THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD
London and Basingstoke
Associated companies in New York Toronto
Dublin Melbourne Johannesburg and Madras

SBN 333 I I887 I (paper cover)

ISBN 978-0-333-11887-0 ISBN 978-1-349-01044-8 (eBook)

DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-01044-8

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Contents

'Key Concepts'
an Introductory Note 7
Acknowledgements 11
1/The Meaning of Representation 13
The main usages of the term 'representative' 15
Political representation 18
2/Medieval Concepts and Practices 22
Medieval theories 22
Medieval parliaments 25
3/The Birth of Representative Government 30
Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau 31
English debates in the seventeenth century 35
The Whig theory of representation 37
Early American ideas about representation 40
The French Revolution 44
Conclusions 47
4/Eiective Representation and the Franchise 50
The concept of virtual representation 51
Representing the people 52
Reflecting society 53
Acting as trustees for the nation 6o
Ignorance as a bar to representation 64
Other limits to the franchise 67
Conclusions 70
&/Representing Interests 72
The representation of personal interests 72
The representation of class interests 74
The representation of sectional interests 78
The limitations of delegated representation 86
 &/Representing Opinions 89
The Idealist attitude to representation 93
Party representation 97
Conclusions 100

7 /The Functions of Representation 106

Popular control 109
Leadership and responsibility 114
System maintenance 117

8/Conclusions 124
Representation and responsiveness 125
A last word 130

Notes and References 133

Bibliography 138
Index 143
 •Key Concepts•
an Introductory Note

Political concepts are part of our daily speech-we abuse

'bureaucracy' and praise 'democracy', welcome or recoil from
'revolution'. Emotive words such as 'equality', 'dictatorship',
'elite' or even 'power' can often, by the very passions which they
raise, obscure a proper understanding of the sense in which they
are, or should be, or should not be, or have been used. Confucius
regarded the 'rectification of names' as the first task of government.
'If names are not correct, language will not be in accordance with
the truth of things', and this in time would lead to the end of
justice, to anarchy and to war. One could with some truth point out
that the attempts hitherto by governments to enforce their own
quaint meanings on words have not been conspicuous for their suc-
cess in the advancement of justice. 'Rectification of names' there
must certainly be: but most of us would prefer such rectification to
take place in the free debate of the university, in the competitive
arena of the pages of the book or journal.
Analysis of commonly used political terms, their reassessment or
their 'rectification', is, of course, normal activity in the political
science departments of our universities. The idea of this series was
indeed born in the course of discussion between a few university
teachers of political science, of whom Professor S. E. Finer of
Manchester University was one. It occurred to us that a series of
short books discussing the 'Key Concepts' in political science
would serve two purposes. In universities these books could pro-
vide the kind of brief political texts which might be of assistance to
students in gaining a fuller understanding ofthe terms which they
were constantly using. But we also hoped that outside the univer-
sities there exists a reading public which has the time, the curiosity
and the inclination to pause to reflect on some of those words and
ideas which are so often taken for granted. Perhaps even 'that insidi-
ous and crafty animal', as Adam Smith described the politician and
statesman, will occasionally derive some pleasure or even profit
from that more leisurely analysis which academic study can
afford, and which a busy life in the practice of politics often
denies.
7
8/'Key Concepts' an Introductory Note
It has been very far from the minds of those who have been con-
cerned in planning and bringing into being the 'Key Concepts'
series to try and impose (as if that were possible!) any uniform
pattern on the authors who have contributed, or will contribute, to
it. I, for one, hope that each author will, in his own individual
manner, seek and find the best way of helping us to a fuller under-
standing of the concept which he has chosen to analyse. But what-
ever form the individual exposition may take, there are, I believe,
three aspects of illumination which we can confidently expect from
each volume in this series. First, we can look for some examination
of the history of the concept, and of its evolution against a changing
social and political background. I believe, as many do who are con-
cerned with the study of political science, that it is primarily in
history that the explanation must be sought for many of the per-
plexing problems of political analysis and judgement which beset
us today. Second, there is the semantic aspect. To look in depth at
a 'key concept' necessarily entails a study of the name which
attached itself to it; of the different ways in which, and the different
purposes for which, the name was used; of the way in which in the
course of history the same name was applied to several concepts, or
several names were applied to one and the same concept; and, in-
deed, of the changes which the same concept, or what appears to
be the same concept, has undergone in the course of time. This
analysis will usually require a searching examination of the relevant
literature in order to assess the present stage of scholarship in each
particular field. And thirdly, I hope that the reader of each volume
in this series will be able to decide for himself what the proper and
valid use should be of a familiar term in politics, and will gain, as
it were, from each volume a sharper and better-tempered tool of
political analysis.
There are many today who would disagree with Bismarck's view
that politics can never be an exact science. I express no opinion on
this much debated question. But all of us who are students of
politics-and our numbers both inside and outside the universities
continue to grow-will be the better for knowing what precisely we
mean when we use a common political term.

London School of Economics Leonard Schapiro

and Political Science General Editor
To J.P. Lees
 Acknowledgements
I should like to thank Dr Robert Dowse, Professor Maurice
Goldsmith and Dr Noel O'Sullivan, each of whom has been
generous with criticisms and advice. I am also grateful to my wife
for her constant support and assistance and to Miss Elizabeth
Brown for typing an untidy manuscript in a cheerful and highly
efficient manner. I made the mistakes myself.
I have dedicated the book to my former tutor at Nottingham,
who laboured not only in tutorials but also over innumerable pints
of beer to develop my interest in political theory, and to whom I
shall always be grateful for the stimulation and encouragement he
gave me.

Exeter 1971 A.H.B.

1/The Meaning
of Representation

The concept of representation is a familiar concept of every-

day life which is used not only in both political and non-political
situations but also in a variety of ways. When people speak of a
representative sample they are not using the term 'representative'
in quite the same way as they are when they speak of a sales
representative or a legal representative. When they talk of an
elected representative or a system of representative government
the connotations of the term are different again. There may be
some common element in these usages, but any exploration of the
concept of representation must start by acknowledging that the
concept is far from simple.
In this type of situation the traditional approach of philosophers,
from the Greeks onwards, has been to search for the essential
meaning of the concept under consideration. Plato's Republic was
an attempt to uncover the essential meaning of the concept of
justice, while subsequent philosophers have tried to penetrate to
the heart of such concepts as authority, liberty, and equality. In the
present century, philosophers in England (and subsequently else-
where) have tended to reject this approach as unhelpful. Words
have usages, it is said, rather than essential meanings, and a careful
analysis of their various usages is likely to be more fruitful than a
concentration of attention on the common element in these usages,
which may be of only etymological significance.
The only thorough study that has so far been made of the con-
cept of representation, that by Hanna F. Pitkin,1 while somewhat
influenced by this approach, nevertheless clings to the older idea
that the object of the analysis is to discover the 'real nature' of the
concept. Hanna Pitkin's examination of the various theories of
representation that have been advanced in the past three centuries
is intended to build up a picture of the thing itself, much as one
may discover the nature of a complex structure by examining
13
14/The Meaning of Representation
flash bulb photographs of it taken from various angles. 2 Each photo-
graph gives a partial and misleading picture of the thing-she
would say a wrong picture 3-but by comparing them the careful
student can piece together a reasonable understanding of what the
structure is really like.
It implies no disrespect to a valuable piece of scholarship to say
that this approach makes the whole problem seem a great deal
more difficult than it need be. The problem becomes much easier
if one starts with the approach recommended by Wittgenstein, who
likened the relationship between usages of a term to the rese m-
blance between members of a family. If one wishes to understand a
family one must study the character of its members: their similar-
ities will emerge but their differences are equally important, and it
would be foolish to try to portray them all as manifestations of a
single essential family character. If the student of political repre-
sentation begins with this kind of approach it can be seen that his
first task is to understand the character of the established usages of
the term, without making the assumption that these can all be
reduced to a single definition. He need not go to the other extreme
and adopt the role of a lexicographer, charting all the vagaries of
common speech. He must drop the assumption of a single meaning,
but careful analysis of the usages of the term will lead to the identi-
fication of a limited number of main usages, each logically distinct
from the others. This can then serve as the basis for further
analysis of the concept, it being accepted that in common speech
people often slip thoughtlessly from one usage to another and blur
the distinctions between them.
The second task of the student is to understand the nature of the
main argument about the various types of representation that have
been advanced by political theorists in different historical periods.
His third task is to appreciate the ways in which these arguments
have influenced, and are reflected in, contemporary political be-
haviour and his fourth task is to assess the value of various con-
cepts of representation in empirical studies of politics. If he does
all this he will understand the concept of representation, and there
is no need at all for him to try to reduce the various usages and
theories to a single definition, any more than he need pronounce
some of them to be correct and others incorrect.
 The main usages of the term 'representative'liS
The main usages of the term 'representative'
There are three main ways in which the term 'represent-
ative' is commonly used, together with various specialized or
subsidiary usages. The three main usages, each logically distinct
from the others, are as follows:
I to denote an agent or spokesman who acts on behalf of
his principal
2 to indicate that a person shares some of the character-
istics of a class of persons
3 to indicate that a person symbolizes the identity or
qualities of a class of persons.
In the first of these usages, the term designates a person
who has the acknowledged duty of defending or advancing certain
interests specified by his principal. A sales representative is a
representative in this sense of the term; so is a man sent by a duellist
to arrange the location and weapons of the duel with his opponent's
representative; so is an ambassador; and so is a lawyer appointed
to defend the interests of his client in a court hearing. The repre-
sentative does not necessarily act exactly as his principal would; in
some situations the representative may drive a harder bargain than
his principal would feel able to do, while in others the representa-
tive may be restrained by professional etiquette and conventions.
But in all cases the function of this kind of representative is to
achieve certain goals set by his principal, and the extent to which
these goals are achieved is a criterion of successful representation.
As a form of shorthand, this kind of representation will henceforth
be described as delegated representation.
One question which commonly arises in connection with dele-
gated representation is the extent to which the representative is,
or should be, bound by the instructions of his principal. This ques-
tion has been discussed in scores of books, hundreds of articles,
thousands of speeches. No agreement has been reached on the
answer, for the simple reason that no meaningful answer is possible
when the question is phrased in general terms. It is a question to
which the answer depends almost entirely on the exact circum-
stances of the representative relationship under discussion. For
example, a lawyer cannot be so closely bound by his client's in-
structions as a sales representative can be bound by his firm's
x6/The Meaning of Representation
instructions, because the lawyer is governed by a strict code of
professional behaviour and has duties to the court as well as to his
client. How closely the lawyer will follow instructions also depends
on the nature of the case: a lawyer in a divorce case might expect
to receive fairly detailed instructions about the kind of evidence to
call and the kind of settlement to work for, whereas a lawyer de-
fending a man charged with murder would expect a fairly free hand
in reaching decisions about the best line of defence.
Another question which often arises is the extent to which a
representative of this kind can bind his principal. It is sometimes
assumed that if such a representative agrees to a proposal this can
be taken to imply the consent of the principal. In fact this is only
sometimes the case. The relationship between representation and
consent varies, and depends on all sorts of contingent factors. Thus
modem ambassadors hardly ever have power to commit their
governments, but when international communications were slower
ambassadors were sometimes given such powers. The relationship
between representation and commitment or consent is therefore
(like the question of instructions) a matter for historical enquiry,
depending as it does on the exact circumstances of each situation.
The statement that a man is a representative in the sense of
being an agent conveys only a limited amount of information. It
does not tell us how the man was appointed, what kind of man he
is, whether he acts under close or loose instructions, or whether his
agreement to a proposal binds his principal. However, it does tell
us something about his functions and probable behaviour, and is
therefore to be sharply distinguished from the second general
usage of the term, which refers not to the functions but to the
descriptive characteristics of the representative.
This second usage is well exemplified in the term 'representative
sample', which indicates a sample of the relevant population chosen
by statistical methods so that the main characteristics of the popu-
lation will be mirrored in the sample. The term is used in the same
sense, but more loosely, to denote a person who is in some respects
typical of a larger class of persons to which he belongs. This usage
occurs in such statements as 'the varied membership of the club is
represented fairly well in the composition of the executive com-
mittee' or 'a state assembly full of lawyers is hardly representative
of the farmers whose produce is the basis of the state's prosperity'.
 The main usages of the term 'representative'/I7
Since a representative body would be ideally constituted, in this
sense of the term, if it were a microcosm of the larger society, this
kind of representation will henceforth be described as microcosmic
representation.
The statement that a man is a representative in this sense does
not tell us anything about his functions or intentions or even about
his behaviour. It simply tells us something about his personal
characteristics. Sometimes there is a degree of confusion about
this. Thus, if a professor of international relations were conducting
a seminar on Middle Eastern problems in an American university
he might call upon an Arab student to expound the Arab viewpoint
and introduce him as 'a representative of the Arab world'. In fact
this student's views might not be typical of Arab views and he
might not be able to put up such a good defence of the politics of
Arab states as an American student could. As a spokesman for the
Arab world he might be a complete failure. But a special signific-
ance would probably be attached to his contribution because of his
nationality, and subsequent speakers might weigh their words
more carefully than they would if no 'representative of the Arab
world' were present.
The third main usage is found when someone is described as
representing a number of persons in a symbolic way. The term
'symbol' is normally applied to an emblem or physical object which
calls to mind some larger and usually more abstract entity. Thus,
the hammer and sickle is a symbol of the u.s.s.R.; the Christian
cross is a symbol of the crucifixion; and the scales of justice sym-
bolize the essential character of the law. In a similar fashion a
symbolic representative calls to mind, or serves as a concrete em-
bodiment of, a whole group or category of persons. In Christian
theology Adam was the symbolic representative of all mankind
when he fell from grace and Jesus Christ filled the same role when
he died on the cross to redeem our sins. In Marx's writings the
proletariat is depicted as the symbolic representative of all human-
ity, having 'a universal character because its sufferings are univer-
sal' and not claiming 'a particular redress because the wrong which
is done to it is not a particular wrong but wrong in general' •4 On a
more limited scale, the Unknown Warrior whose bones lie in
Westminster Abbey is a symbolic representative of all British
soldiers who perished in the two World Wars.
x8/The Meaning of Representation
This usage is neither as common nor as important as the other
two kinds of usage, but it must not be ignored because symbolic
representation-and the demand for symbolic representation-
plays a significant part in political activity.

Political representation
A political representative is a person who, by custom or
law, has the status or role of a representative within a political
system. The definition of this latter term is unfortunately not so
easy, as the exact meaning of the term 'political' is open to question.
One obvious starting point is to say that political activity is
essentially communication with a purpose, that purpose being to
arrive at a collective decision or to resolve a dispute. But this is
insufficiently precise, as it could include discussions in a university
seminar or argument about which football team has the best record.
It can be made more precise by saying that the purpose of political
activity is to influence or determine the decisions of those who
wield authority in society, thus linking politics firmly with the
process of civil government. This is the line taken by David
Easton, who has defined the object of politics as 'the authoritative
allocation of values in a society'. 5 But while this approach is logical
and convenient, it has two distinct limitations. On the one hand, it
excludes activities which are commonly regarded as political even
though they take place within private associations, such as disputes
over policy within a trade union. On the other hand, it seems to
exclude the realm of international politics, where nobody exercises
authority.
While it is thus difficult to regard this as an entirely satisfactory
way of defining politics, it is also difficult to improve upon it. It
seems impossible to produce a short definition of political activity
that is narrow enough to exclude activities that are more properly
described as economic or social or military or academic, but broad
enough to include such varied phenomena as the selection of trade-
union leaders, the resolution of disputes in a nomadic tribe, the
government of a modem industrial state, diplomatic relations be-
tween states, and the activities of the Vietcong or the Palestine
Liberation Front. We must therefore content ourselves with a
rough and approximate characterization of political activity, such
 Political representation/I9
as that it is the activity of governing a community or association,
together with those activities which are designed to influence the
decisions that are taken during the process of government. Widely
interpreted, this could include the attempts by one government to
influence the politics of another, and could thus include inter-
national politics as well as the politics of the nation state and of local
authorities and associations within the state.
A political system can be defined simply as a set of political
activities which are functionally related to one another and have
some continuity in time. Political representatives have a variety of
roles within such a system. They may be delegated representatives,
such as the British representative on the Security Council, the
American representative at the Vietnam peace talks which opened
in Paris in 1968, or thespokesmen for pressure groups who play a
prominent part in the legislative process in most advanced coun-
tries. They may be representatives in the microcosmic sense, as
illustrated by the determination of the Labour Representative
Committee to secure the election of working men to Parliament or
by the conventions which determine that each Canadian cabinet
shall contain so many French Canadians, so many members from
Ontario, and so many members from the western provinces. They
may be representatives in the symbolic sense, as monarchs or
presidents are often regarded as the symbolic representative of the
nation as a whole.
However, most of the controversies over political representation
have revolved around the choice and functions of elected members
of a representative assembly, whose position cannot be equated
easily with any of the three main types of representation defined
above. To some extent, at least, they generally act as spokesmen
for their electors, but the nature of the proper relationship between
elected persons and their constituents has been a matter of dispute
for several centuries and it would certainly be wrong to regard
elected representatives as being essentially agents for those who
elected them. That they should act in this way is a common recom-
mendation, but it follows from this that they do not necessarily act
in this way and therefore cannot be defined in these terms.
In fact, the description of elected members of a political assem-
bly as representatives is best regarded as a specialized usage of the
term, not exactly equivalent to any non-political usage. The essential
2ojThe Meaning of Representation
characteristic of such persons is the manner of their selection,
not their behaviour or characteristics or symbolic value. Of course,
the concept of election is occasionally the subject of controversy,
since some writers define it in a purely formal and procedural way
whereas others claim that it implies freedom of choice, with all that
this involves. Since acceptance of this claim would mean that the
members of most of the world's political assemblies could not be
described as elected representatives, it will be convenient in this
context to think of election as a formal procedure, not necessarily
implying competition or freedom. 6
Are elected representatives also representatives in any or all of
the three general usages of the term? The answer to this is that
they may or may not be, although it is constantly urged by inter-
ested parties that they ought to be. Innumerable writers and
speakers have maintained that elected representatives have a duty
to act as agents for their constituents, and in some countries at some
periods this has been the prevailing view. On the other hand, the
most influential theorists in the Western world have stressed the
need for elected representatives to do whatever they think best for
the nation as a whole while other writers again have insisted that
the first duty of an elected person is to support his party. The
significance and validity of instructions and mandates has been are-
current theme in the perennial debate about political representation.
Another recurrent theme in this debate is the view that, ideally,
elected representatives should be similar to their electors, so that
the assembly would be a social microcosm of the nation. Advocates
of this view have suggested that an assembly cannot be properly
representative of the nation ifits social composition is conspicuous-
ly different from that of the electorate. In homogeneous societies
such as Britain this kind of argument, though often used as a basis
for criticizing existing institutions, has rarely cut much ice, but in
societies divided on social or religious lines its impact has naturally
been much greater. Ethnic loyalties in American cities have led to
the practice whereby the parties nominate a 'balanced ticket' for
election, each party's list of candidates containing a suitable pro-
portion of Irish-Americans, Italian-Americans and so on. In
Mrican and Asian states issues of this kind are much more critical:
it should always be remembered that a crucial step in the develop-
ments which led up to the partition of India was that taken when
 Political representation/2I
Jinnah, the leader of the Muslim League, insisted that as the
Muslim League represented all Muslims and the Congress Party
was (in his view) a Hindu party, he could no longer accept Muslims
nominated by the Congress Party as legitimate representatives of
anybody. 7
It follows that both the first and second general usages of the
term 'representative' have been prominent in the debates about
elected representatives. Symbolic representation has been much
less prominent, as it has rarely been canvassed openly. But there
can be no doubt that in many political situations the election or
appointment of a representative of a minority group has a signifi-
cance out of all proportion to the real power he enjoys because he
symbolizes the recognition of the political rights of the group in
question. Obvious examples are the nomination and Senate con-
firmation of Thurgood Marshall as the first black member of the
U.S. Supreme Court, the election of black politicians as mayors in
Cleveland and Newark, and the appointment of Sir Learie Con-
stantine (a West Indian) to the House of Lords in 1968.
Elected representatives may therefore be representatives in any
or none of the three main senses outlined earlier in this chapter.
The nature of political representation is a complex matter which
cannot be understood by formulating a definition, but only by
examining the debates about representation that have taken place
in various historical situations. It is for this reason that in the next
chapters we shall look back into the past.
2/Medieval Concepts
and Practices

To understand the nature of modem concepts of political

representation, some account must be given of the historical
developments which led to the emergence of these concepts. Most
modern debates on the subject are conducted in terms of ideas
which were first advanced many decades (if not centuries) ago and
the only way to get a clear grasp of these ideas is to know something
of the circumstances in which they originated. It would not be
appropriate in this study to proceed step by step through the his-
tory of political representation but it will be helpful to look at the
periods when significant movements of ideas took place. We shall
begin with the period when representative institutions were first
established as part of the machinery of secular government.
This development had of course been preceded by the establish-
ment of representative institutions within the Catholic Church and
it is possible to take the view that these ecclesiastical developments
were of great imponance. However, the central concern of this
study is with the concept of representation in relation to the process
ofsecular government and there has been a good deal of controversy
among historians as to whether secular developments were con-
siderably or only slightly influenced by ecclesiastical practices.
Without taking sides in this controversy, it seems unnecessary in
this context to discuss questions of ecclesiastical organization.

Medieval theories
As a general rule, normative theories about the working of
political institutions are not formulated until some time after the
institutions themselves have come into being, and coherent
theories of political representation did not emerge until a very long
time after the development of parliamentary bodies in England and
elsewhere in the thirteenthandfouneenth centuries. But throughout
22
 Medie-oal theories/23
the Middle Ages there seem to have been two views about the
origins of political authority which were not entirely irrelevant to
the question of representation and were sometimes referred to in
subsequent discussions of representation.
The main division among philosophers was between those who
subscribed to the 'ascending theory' of political authority and those
who were committed to the 'descending theory'.1 According to the
former theory, based to some extent on the practice of the Ger-
manic tribes, political authority originated with the people and was
delegated by them to leaders and monarchs. The task of these
rulers was not so much to make laws as to interpret and enforce the
customary laws of society. In this view the king could be regarded
as the symbolic representative of his people, and this seemed to be
the position of those early Anglo-Saxon kings who 'headed the
nation, embodied the tribal consciousness, and constituted living
symbols of religious and even mystical significance in the eyes of
their peoples'.2
Such a king might also be regarded as a representative in the
sense that, first, he had been chosen from among the several eligi-
ble members of the ruling family (as happened in some of the
Anglo-Saxon kingdoms) and, second, it was his duty to act on
behalf of his people in upholding their laws (to which he himself
was also subject). Sir John Fortescue, who was Lord Chief Justice
of England from 14,i2 to 1461, reflected this tradition of thought
when he stated that the king's duty was to 'protect his subjects in
their lives, properties and lands; for this very purpose he has dele-
gation of power from the people'. 3
According to the contrasting tradition of political thought in the
Middle Ages, the authority of some men over others could only be
regarded as rightful if it were divinely sanctioned. As early as the
fifth century St Augustine had said that 'God distributed the laws
to mankind through the medium of kings',' and eight centuries
later StThomas Aquinas expressed the same idea when he claimed
that 'power descended from God'. 6 According to this view the
Pope was God's representative on earth in regard to spiritual mat-
ters while secular rulers were bound by laws of nature which were
of divine origin.
Because of the dominant influence of the Christian Church in
medieval Europe the descending theory of political authority
24/Medieval Concepts and Practices
became the established theory, while the ascending theory was, in
Ullman's phrase, 'driven underground' 6 -but it did not disappear
entirely. In the fourteenth century Marsilio of Padua produced a
theory of politics that incorporated some of the elements of the
ascending theory, though his main object was not to stress the
rights of citizens but (anticipating Machiavelli) to explain the need
for secular authorities to free themselves from the influence of the
Church. In England for several centuries one of the strains in the
literature of political reform was the theory of the 'Norman Yoke',
which has been outlined in the following terms:
Before Io66 the Anglo-Saxon inhabitants of this country
lived as free and equal citizens, governing themselves
through representative institutions. The Norman Conquest
deprived them of this liberty, and established the tyranny
of an alien King and landlords. But the people did not for-
get the rights they had lost. They fought continuously to
recover them, with varying success. Concessions (Magna
Carta, for instance) were from time to time extorted from
their rulers, and always the tradition of lost Anglo-Saxon
freedom was a stimulus to ever more insistent demands
upon the successors of the Norman usurpers. 7
This was a myth which embodied some elements of truth
without being historically accurate, and its survival over several
centuries is a fascinating example of the continuity of a political
idea: Christopher Hill has traced it in detail from the sixteenth
century to the nineteenth and he says that 'some theory of this sort
may well have had a continuous history since I066'. 8
But despite the long history of the ascending theory of authority,
the actual development of representative institutions in medieval
Europe resulted from the financial and administrative needs of
kings, not from any movement designed to increase the political
influence of citizens. The first phase in the history of representative
government began in several European kingdoms in the thirteenth
and fourteenth centuries, when representatives of important
classes or communities within society were invited to give con-
sent to measures proposed by the king, particularly measures of
taxation.
 Medieval parliaments/25
Medieval parliaments
In describing this development it is necessary to draw a
distinction between those pre-parliamentary courts or councils or
assemblies that were called from time to time to acclaim the actions
of the monarch or 'to give solemnity to certain events', 9 but which
lacked deliberative powers, and the parliamentary bodies which
emerged when these assemblies acquired deliberative powers and
came to be recognized as an established part of the process of
government. The reasons for the transition varied: sometimes the
king recognized the assembly as representing the realm 'through
incapacity, weakness or even broadmindedness', 10 while in other
states the members of the assembly asserted themselves in relation
to the king and induced him to make concessions to them. In some
countries, such as England, there was a considerable period of
transition, with councils of the old kind apparently alternating with
parliamentary assemblies of the new kind, according to the purpose
of the meeting and the number of people summoned to it.
The first assembly that can reasonably be described as parlia-
mentary took place in the Spanish kingdom of Leon in n88, at
which the king undertook to 'follow the counsels of his bishops,
nobles and wise men in all circumstances in matters of peace and
war' .U In other Spanish kingdoms, such as Castile and Catalonia,
parliamentary bodies emerged and acquired significant powers
during the latter part of the thirteenth century. In England the
significant changes took place between the accession of King John
in II99 and the enforced abdication of Edward II in 1327, a tur-
bulent period marked by crises and recurrent conflicts between the
barons and the four successive kings, only one of whom was noted
for his wisdom or strength.
In France there was a dramatic meeting of the Estates-General
in 1302, when Philip the Fair summoned barons and clerics and
urban representatives to Paris at a time when he was at war with
England and in conflict with the Pope, but the verdict of recent
historians is that this assembly 'possessed powers only of a pleb-
iscitary nature, to acclaim the decisions of the sovereign without the
possibility of opposing or modifying them'. 12 It was not until the
meetings of 1355 to 1357 that the French 'estates' acquired the
characteristics of a parliament. In these years the king badly needed
money and troops for his war against England but the estates
z6/Medieval Concepts and Practices
showed an unprecedented intransigence, refusing to promise
either unless they were granted the right to participate in govern-
ment, the promise of periodic assemblies, and some control over
the levying of taxes. In a series of stormy meetings these demands
were conceded in principle, but they were not translated into
practice and when the king's position improved he felt free to
govern as before. In fact the French Estates-General never met
regularly, though when they did meet they were a force to be
reckoned with. For the student of modern politics this whole
story is a fascinating example of the longevity of a political culture,
for the events of the mid-fourteenth century can be seen as a
medieval prologue to the revolutionary attitudes, the conflicts over
points of principle, the alternation of radical progress and reaction
that have characterized French politics in the past two hundred
years.
In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries there were parallel
developments in the German and Italian kingdoms that could be
mentioned, but it will be more rewarding to trace the English
developments in greater detail, for only in England has the parlia-
mentary assembly had a continuous history from the Middle Ages
to the present time. In England the Magna Carta of 1215 is often
referred to as the first significant milestone on the road to repre-
sentative government, but care is needed in ascribing proper
significance to it. The Charter was an agreement between the king
and his barons, and the latter are the only group (apart from
children, lunatics and convicts) who have never been given the
franchise in England. The importance of the Charter in this con-
nection was that the king agreed not to exercise his power to
impose a tax known as scutage except with the consent of the
common council of the realm, to which all lords of the realm
would be summoned. During the next century and a half the
English kings surrendered the other arbitrary powers of taxation
they had enjoyed-Danegeld, tallage, and customs duties-so that
subsequent monarchs were able to levy taxes only with the consent
of Parliament.
King John was forced to make this initial surrender of fiscal
powers by the collective action of the barons, which continued in
subsequent decades. In section 14 of Magna Carta the barons
promised that their agreement of payment of scutage to the king,
 Medieval parliaments/Z7
if given at a meeting to which all tenants-in-chief had been sum-
moned, would bind those who had not attended as well as those
who took part. In 1242 the barons joined in an oath that if the
king asked them for grants they would not reply individually, but
only collectively. This was not representation, for all the barons
were entitled to be present. But representation was introduced in
1254, when the knights of the shires were summoned to Parlia-
ment, it being decreed that they must be elected in the county
courts and it being made clear that the knights would be em-
powered both to speak for the whole county and to make promises
which would be regarded as binding on the whole county. They
were to be representatives in the sense of agents, and their
consent was taken to be equivalent to the consent of those they
represented.
In the next few decades Parliament deliberated not as one body,
but as several. The king's requests would be discussed separately
by the barons, the knights, the burgesses, and the proctors of the
clergy: they were all part of Parliament, but 'it would be more
accurate to call the representative portion of the Parliament a
House of Communes than a House of Commons'. 13 However, in
the fourteenth century the communes or estates were merged in
one body, beginning in 1327, and in 1365 the Chief Justice of
England was able to say: 'Everyone is considered to know what is
done in Parliament: for so soon as Parliament has concluded
everything, the law presumes that everyone has notice of it; for
the Parliament represents the body of all the realm.' 14•
The English Parliament therefore emerged gradually, and its
early development was influenced hardly at all by theories of
representation. Its composition was determined almost entirely by
the practical need of successive kings to get the consent of the
propertied classes to measures of taxation. It was summoned in-
frequently, there was little competition for membership, and most
of those who were appointed made the wearisome journey to
Westminster without enthusiasm. Each session would last two or
three weeks, with meetings between seven and ten o'clock each
morning and the rest of the days given over to talking, gambling,
and drinking. But in these proceedings can be discerned many of
the elements of a system of representative government, albeit in
embryo form.
28/Medieval Concepts and Practices
In the first place, the commoners who attended Parliament came
as agents, able to speak for their constituencies and to give consent
to measures on behalf of their constituents. This was thought very
important by the king and from 1294 onwards the writs of sum-
mons required that the representatives should have 'full and
sufficient power to do and consent to those things which then and
there by the common counsel of our realm shall happen to be
ordained ... so that for want of such power ... the affairs may in
no wise remain unfinished' .15
Secondly, they presented-or as some would say, represented-
the grievances of their constituents to the king and his councillors.
This was not an immediate development, but by 'the end of the
14th century it was certainly considered the duty of members to
present the grievances of their constituents in Parliament'.18 They
did this before agreeing to taxation, a convention summarized in
the formula 'Redress of grievances before supply'.
Thirdly, they were able-cautiously at first-to negotiate with
the king. Often this was a matter of form rather than substance-a
hesitation before agreeing to the king's demands-but at other
times real bargains were struck. In 1290 Parliament agreed to a
levy of one-fifteenth of the value of all movable property in ex-
change for a promise that the king would expel every Jew from
England. In 1297 'the knights and nobles in one body refused the
King a grant of money until he had redressed their grievances
about the forest laws' .17 And in the following century there were
numerous examples.
Fourthly, Parliament served from the very beginning the sup-
portive function that is a characteristic of most representative
institutions. As channels of communication, they carry messages
in both directions. Messages from the people to their rulers have
generally been thought more important, in the sense of more
desirable, by normative theorists of politics. Moreover, it com-
monly suits the interests of both the rulers and the representatives
to lay greater stress on the function of a parliament as a place
where grievances can be aired and popular opinions expressed than
on its function of maximizing support for the policies of the rulers.
For these reasons, the supportive function of representative
institutions has usually been either underestimated or ignored in
the literature.
 Medieval parliaments/29
In fact, it has always been a vital function of English and other
parliaments. In 1261, Bishop Stubbs tells us, Henry III summoned
the knights of the shires so that 'they might see and understand
for themselves that he was only aiming at the welfare of the whole
community'.18 The motives of Edward I in calling his first
Parliament have been described in the following way:
In 1275 Edward I summoned knights to his first Parlia-
ment, not to take an active part in drawing up the great
Statute of Westminster I, but rather to hear and understand
the reforms in local government which it contained, and
to carry back to the community of the shire the explanation
of the new provisions for restraining the corruptions and
oppressions of their sheriffs. In 1283 and again in 1295 and
1307 Edward I was undoubtedly, like his contemporary
Philippe le Bel, making use of the representative system for
propaganda purposes; demonstrating to the communities of
shire and borough, on whose material assistance he was
bound to rely, the justice of his own cause against the
villainy of his enemy.1e
The medieval parliaments in other European kingdoms
shared these characteristics, and by the end of the fourteenth cen-
tury representative institutions were part of the machinery of
government in over a dozen states. Of course, it should not be
assumed that this development was in any sense democratic. These
institutions emerged in feudal societies, where rights, powers and
privileges depended on the ownership of land. When the king
summoned his magnates and bishops to a royal council he did so
because they were men of power, and when he extended the sum-
mons to include knights and burgesses he did so because they
could speak on behalf of other property-owners. The most influ-
ential members, the great magnates, represented only themselves,
while the other members were essentially intermediaries, standing
between the landowners and taxpayers on one hand and the king
and his officials on the other. Nevertheless, it is from these bodies
that the representative institutions of the modern world are
descended.
3/The Birth of
Representative
Government

In the Middle Ages various countries had representative

institutions but it cannot be said that any country had a system of
representative government. By this term is meant a system of
national government in which representative institutions play a
crucial role in the decision-making process, so that few oolitical
changes of any importance can be made without the authority of
the central legislative assembly. This form of government emerged
in England in the seventeenth century, in America and France
during the latter part of the eighteenth century, and in other
European countries-largely under the influence of French ideas-
in the nineteenth century.
This did not happen as the result of a slow process of develop-
ment from medieval times, with parliamentary power gradually
increasing and royal power gradually waning. On the contrary, the
decline of feudalism in Europe was followed by an age which is
commonly known as the age of absolutism, in which royal power
was freed from the fetters of medieval custom, was enhanced by
the relative decline in the power of the nobles and the strengthen-
ing of the machinery of government, and was enhanced further by
a decline in the authority of the Roman Catholic Church. In
medieval times the secular authority operated within a framework
of natural law and theorists discussed the relationship between the
secular and the spiritual authorities (it being widely accepted that
in the last resort the latter had pre-eminence). In early modern
times the secular authority was supreme, Louis XIV could declare
'l'etat, c'est moi', and James I could speak of the 'divine right of
Kings' to rule as they thought fit. In this age many European
parliaments became impotent or were dissolved, the French
Estates-General were not called for 175 years (from 1614 to 1789),
and it was only in England that Parliament had a continuous
existence.
30
 Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau/31
This phase of kingly power gave way to parliamentary govern-
ment as the result of revolutionary movements and ideas. In
England, which led the way, the revolutions of the seventeenth
century owed more to religious and personal factors than to an
ideological movement, but there was nevertheless a considerable
flowering of political ideas. In the American colonies many of these
English ideas were adapted to sustain the revolutionaries in their
campaign against George 111, while the Declaration of Indepen-
dence and subsequent constitutional documents committed the
new nation to a radical set of political principles. In France
the eighteenth century was the greatest of all periods for political
theorizing.
Although the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were dis-
tinguished in this way by a great outpouring of political ideas, not
all of the writers had much to say about political representation.
The most philosophical of them were concerned with the problems
of political obligation rather than with those of representation, and
this is not surprising, for philosophical reflection about an institu-
tion normally comes some time after the institution itself has
developed. But the influence of these thinkers on subsequent
writers has been so great that it will be appropriate to mention
their ideas about representation before discussing the ideas of the
politicians in each country.

Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau

The three great theorists of obligation in this period were
Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. To the
question of 'whether the magistrate's crown drops down on his
head immediately from Heaven or be placed there by the hands of
his subjects'1 each gave the latter answer: they believed it right to
think of authority as something which had been conferred on the
government by the people. Their treatment of the problems of
authority and obligation led each of them to refer to the concept of
representation, and it will be helpful to indicate, very briefly, the
nature of their attitudes.
The kernel of Hobbes's position in the Leviathan is his theory
that civil society should be thought of as having been created by a
social contract between people who, discontented with the state of
32/The Birth of Representative Government

primitive anarchy in which they lived, relinquished their natural

liberty to use force to a sovereign authority whom they designated
as their political representative. This authority, whether consisting
of one man or of an assembly, would have the duty to maintain
peace and to enact whatever laws it thought appropriate to this
end. All citizens of this society would be obliged to obey these
laws, providing only that if a man's life were directly threatened
by them he would be released from his obligation.
At one level this obligation to obey the government can be
justified in terms of the personal security that the maintenance of
order brings to the citizen. Hobbes placed such a high valuation
on security that he believed all men, if they were rational, should be
willing to recognize that any government which preserved security
was acting in their best interests and was therefore entitled to their
obedience. However, Hobbes wished to buttress this utilitarian
argument for obedience by a contractarian argument, and to do
this he developed his theory that Leviathan was in fact the people's
representative, having been established in that capacity at the time
of the original contract. Hobbes defined a representative as an
agent who has the right to commit his principal to whatever actions
or policies the agent thinks appropriate, and on this basis it was
asserted that citizens of an ordered society were morally obliged
to accept and obey whatever rules the governing authority
made.
The view of the nature and powers of a representative that
Hobbes outlined in this work is exemplified in English and
American law in the position of the person who is given power of
attorney. If (for example) a man who faces a long illness gives his
wife this power, the wife will be able to manage his affairs and dis-
pose of his property as she thinks fit and the husband will be both
legally and morally obliged to accept her decisions as binding. But
although some representations enjoy this kind of power, and it
may indeed be argued that elected legislators stand in this kind of
relationship to the electorate, it would be absurd to claim that all
representatives are necessarily in this position. Hobbes depicted
one kind of representative relationship as if it were the only kind,
and for this reason his concept of representation, while highly
significant in some contexts, has failed to command acceptance as
a general guide to the nature of representation in political life. 2
 Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau/33
John Locke was a philosopher whose writings influenced
Jefferson and other Americans who propagated republican prin-
ciples after 1776, and who is commonly taken to be one of the
early defenders of representative government. In fact Locke's ideas
about representation were far from clear: he is important not for
his clarity or his originality (for most of his political ideas had
already been expressed in pamphlets by other writers) but for the
fact that he advanced arguments about the right to revolution,
government by consent, and the rule of the majority that were
subsequently seized upon by politicians as offering philosophical
justification for their beliefs and actions.
The two main pillars of Locke's political theory are a belief in
trusteeship and a belief in government by consent. Whereas
Hobbes had imagined a single social compact in which men estab-
lished a civic society by agreeing with each other to relinquish
their powers to a body which would henceforth have absolute
authority over them, Locke conceived of a two-step process by
which, first, men would agree to form a society and accept the
decisions of the majority and, second, the majority would establish
a government to make laws and execute them. This government,
which might be monarchical, aristocratic or democratic in form (so
long as the majority approved) would be entrusted to protect the
life, liberty and property of its citizens. If it betrayed this trust its
citizens would have a right to replace it by another. This line of
argument was used to justify the English Revolution of 1688 and
was reflected very clearly in the American Declaration of Indepen-
dence. But although it was thus employed by political leaders whose
actions resulted in the development of representative government,
it was not in itself a theory of representation.
Locke's other central argument was that government, to be
legitimate, should be based on the consent of the governed, but
there is a fatal ambiguity in his development of this theme. While
he started by writing of consent as if it meant the voluntary agree-
ment of each individual citizen, he went on in subsequent chapters
of the Second Treatise to dilute this concept so as to include the
tacit consent that men could be assumed to have given simply by
remaining in the country and accepting the protection of its laws.
The first definition would imply that the government would
cease to be legitimate whenever an appreciable number of citizens
2
34/The Birth of Representative Government
felt it had betrayed its trust, whereas the second would imply that
any government, however unpopular, would remain legitimate
until its citizens actively revolted against it. The incompatibility of
these positions undermines Locke's theory, as does his failure to
suggest any institutional process by which consent could be granted
or withheld. It can be argued that the idea that the continuing sup-
port of elected representatives was necessary to legitimize a govern-
ment was exactly what Locke's theory needed and exactly what
Locke failed (with one partial exception) to supply.
The exception is interesting because it illustrates Locke's depen-
dence on his experience of British politics. He declared that laws
imposing taxation could never be legitimate unless passed with the
voluntary consent of a majority of the potential tax-payers, ex-
pressed either directly or through their representatives. 3 There is
no obvious logic in singling out taxation laws in this way, but
Locke's decision to do so reflected the experience of the English
Parliament, which had insisted on its sole right to impose measures
of taxation as a way of compelling the king to convene Parliament at
least once a year. Some decades later this attitude towards taxation
was of course encapsulated in the slogan adopted by the American
colonists: 'No taxation without representation.' Perhaps this
exemplifies Locke's contribution to political thought; his ideas
were neither clear nor original nor profound, but he lent his
authority as a philosopher to a summary of political views that
were widely held in England towards the end of the seventeenth
century and he influenced the reformers of the following century
because, irrespective of his logic, he had said what they wanted to
hear."'
Jean-Jacques Rousseau is often regarded as the father of
modern democratic ideas because he was the first political theorist
of any stature to base his ideas on the belief that governmental
decisions should reflect the will of the people. However, Rousseau
believed in the virtues of what is now called direct democracy, not
in those of political representation. In a well-known passage, he
declared that sovereignty is inalienable and said that: 'The people
of England regards itself as free; but it is grossly mistaken; it is free
only during the election of members of Parliament.' 6
The basis of this attitude was Rousseau's belief that political
action should involve an expression of the will of the citizen,
 English debates i'n the seventeenth century/35
exercised freely in relation to each general issue that arose. A
representative might look after another person's interests, if these
were clearly known, but he could hardly formulate another per-
son's will. This was something a man could do only for himself.
Partly for this reason, Rousseau believed that political freedom
could exist only in states small enough for all the citizens to meet
together, as in his native city of Geneva.
It follows that Hobbes and Locke and Rousseau contributed
only a little to our stock of ideas about representative government.
We can learn somewhat more by turning to the politicians of
three countries in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and to
the work of writers who were more directly involved in the political
events of their time than were the three theorists of the social
contract.

English debates in the seventeenth century

In England in the first half of the seventeenth century the
debates between political leaders were somewhat parochial in
nature and contain relatively little of interest to the modern student
of politics. The main question at issue was the balance of power
between the three institutions that jointly comprised the King-in-
Parliament, namely the monarchy, the House of Lords and the
House of Commons. The varied actions which precipitated the
crisis of 1640 were the Icing's attempts to levy taxes without
parliamentary authority, the Archbishop of Canterbury's intoler-
ance of church reformers, and the rebellion of the Scots and the
Irish. The king was forced to call Parliament to raise revenue to
finance his military campaigns, and Parliament refused to give the
king what he wanted until other grievances were settled. Attitudes
hardened and the country moved into a state of civil war between
the Parliamentarians and the Royalists.
In this conflict the ideal to which the Parliamentarians looked
was a rather hazy notion of a balanced constitution, thought to
have existed at some time in the past. Most of their arguments
were cast in the form of an appeal to historical precedent, as indeed
were most of their opponents' arguments. As history was con-
ceived of in static terms, with the experience of Richard III no
more and no less relevant than that of Elizabeth, the resulting
debate was singularly unilluminating. 'Each side accused the
36/The Birth of Representative Government
other, with varying degrees of accuracy and sincerity, of exceeding
their customary rights or neglecting their customary duties', and
many of the arguments were concerned, 'not to prove that this or
that element of government was good or bad in itself, but whether
or not it had existed at the time of the Black Prince'. 6 There were
repeated assertions that the Houses of Parliament represented the
kingdom in their quarrels with the king but the assertions were
not based on a clearly-defined view of the nature of representation
and it is difficult to learn anything of conceptual interest about
representation from these controversies.
Nor are the immediate controversies surrounding the 1688
revolution of much relevance, as political questions were over-
shadowed by religious and personal issues. However, the seven-
teenth century saw the emergence of two important styles of
thought about the question of political representation, one being
the radical conception that all men have a right to be enfran-
chised and the other being the Whig view of the role of members
of Parliament.
The demand for manhood suffrage was made for the first time
in England in the 1640s, by a group of soldiers and civilians who
came to be known as the Levellers. Unlike the Parliamentarians,
they were not so concerned about the powers of Parliament in
relation to the executive as they were about Parliament's composi-
tion and relationship to the people. While the Levellers recognized
that Parliament was the law-making body, they believed that its
legislation would only be legitimate if all male citizens were able
to participate in the election of its members. Wildman, an agent of
the private soldiers, put the argument in the following terms:

I conceive that the undeniable maxim of government is that

all government is in the free assent of the people. If so, then
upon that account there is no person that is under a free
government or hath justly his own, unless he by his free
consent be put under that government. This he cannot be
unless he be consenting to it and therefore according to this
maxim there is never a person in England but aught to have
a voice in elections ••. there are no laws that in this strict-
ness and vigour of justice any man is bound to that are not
made by those whom he doth consent to. 7
 The Whig theory of representation/37
Colonel Rainborough agreed, declaring that 'Every man
born in England cannot, aught not, neither by the law of God nor
the law of nature, to be exempted from the choice of those who
are to make laws for him to live under and for him, for ought I
know, to lose his life under.' 8
In the three 'Agreements of the People', the Levellers demanded
annual or biennial Parliaments and equal constituencies as well as
manhood suffrage; they declared that Parliament should be the
agent of the popular will; and they maintained that the people
possessed certain natural rights, such as religious freedom and
equality before the law, which Parliament should not be entitled
to curtail. But they did not explain what the relations should be
between Parliament and the executive branch of government and
they gave no clear account of how the popular will was to be
translated into governmental action.
It follows that the Levellers' concept of political representation
was in one basic respect similar to the medieval concept. The
political representative had been viewed as an agent, sent to the
national Parliament by classes or communities within society to
give or withhold their consent to measures of taxation or legislation
proposed by the executive. The Levellers wished to see the right
to choose these agents extended from the landed gentry and the
tradesmen of the boroughs to the entire adult population, so that
M.P .s would represent the whole people. But the Levellers did not
see clearly that if this were done the role of the representative
might have to change.

The Whig theory of representation

The English Whigs, though members of the traditional
ruling classes, developed a view about the role of political repre-
sentatives that was more novel than that of the Levellers. The
essence of this view was that, if Parliament were to be the centre
of political power rather than merely a check on the king's power,
the member of Parliament would have to be free to do what he
thought best in the national interest rather than act merely as an
agent for his constituents.
Before developing this argument, it is necessary to enter a
caveat. Reference to the Whig theory of representation should not
38/The Birth of Representative Government
be taken to imply that eighteenth-century Parliaments were
divided on ideological lines, with all Whigs subscribing to one
theory of government and all Tories to another. Political life was
too fluid, too pragmatic and too individualistic to be so interpreted.
All that is suggested is that two attitudes to the role of Parliament
can be discerned, of which one was taken mainly by Whig spokes-
men and the other was taken mainly by Tories. The Tory attitude
was the traditional one that the function of M.P .s was to represent
local interests and to seek redress for particular grievances, it being
assumed that the king and his ministers had the main responsibility
for interpreting the national interest. In contrast, Whig spokesmen
insisted that Parliament was a deliberative body, representing the
whole nation, whose decisions should be more than a mere aggre-
gate of sectional demands.
An early expression of the Whig view is to be found in Algernon
Sidney's Discourses Concerning Government, which was published
in 1698 (some years after it was written). Sidney argued that
It is not therefore for Kent or Sussex, Lewes or Maidstone,
but for the whole nation, that the members chosen to serve
in these places are sent to serve in Parliament. And though
it be fit for them ... to harken to the opinions of the electors
for the information of their judgements, and to the end that
what they say may be of more weight ... yet they are not
strictly and properly obliged to give account of their
actions to any, unless the whole body of the nation for
which they serve, and who are equally concerned in their
resolutions, could be assembled. 9
This assertion that members of Parliament should be under
no obligation to take instructions from their constituents was
essential to the Whig view of government. Partly because of this
view, the Whigs supported the Septennial Act of 1716 which
extended the life of the House of Commons to seven years while
the Tories urged the need for more frequent elections. In a debate
on a motion to repeal this act in 1734, the Tory Lord Noel
Somerset expressed the traditional view of the role of M.P.s when
he claimed that as 'this House is properly the grand inquest of the
nation, they are to represent the grievances of the people to their
sovereign'. 10 Whig leaders, on the other hand, insisted on the need
 The Whig theory of representation/39
for M.P .s to have a large measure of independence, their attitude
being exemplified in the following remarks by John Willis:
After we are chosen, and have taken our seats in this
House, we have no longer any dependence on our electors,
at least in as far as regards our behaviour here. Their whole
power is then devolved upon us, and we are in every ques-
tion that comes before this House, to regard only the
pablic good in general, and to determine according to our
own judgements.11
Edmund Burke was therefore following in a long tradition
when he made his famous and oft-quoted speech to the electors of
Bristol in I774· Parliament, he said, was
. • • not a congress of ambassadors from different hostile
interests; which interests each must maintain, as an agent
and advocate, against the other agents and advocates; but
Parliament is a deliberative assembly of one nation, with one
interest, that of the whole; where, not local purposes, not
local prejudices ought to guide, but the general good,
resulting from the general reason of the whole.
Certainly a representative should keep in close touch with
his constituents, and should even 'prefer their interests to his own.
But his unbiassed opinion, his mature judgement, his enlightened
conscience, he ought not to sacrifice to you ••• your representative
owes you, not his industry only, but his judgement; and he betrays,
instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion.' 12
The emergence of this view of the role of Parliament was of
immense importance, not only because of its part in the evolution
of the British political system but also because it involved the
development of an entirely new and purely political concept of
representation. The three basic concepts of representation, it will
be recalled, are:
I that the representative is an agent or delegate, which
may be called the concept of delegated representation;
2 that the representative is typical of a class or category
of persons, which may be called the concept of micro-
cosmic representation;
3 the concept of symbolic representation.
40/The Birth of Representative Government
Now, according to the Whig theory, members of Parliament
should be neither delegated representatives nor microcosmic repre-
sentatives nor symbolic representatives. They are elected represen-
tatives whose first duty should be not to promote the interests of
their electors but to promote the interests of the nation as a whole,
according to their personal judgement of what is best. This is
most appropriately called the concept of elective representation.
In developing this concept the Whigs made no reference to the
writings of Hobbes, whom they doubtless regarded as a defender
of absolutism, but we may note that Hobbes's view of representa-
tion is not without relevance to the Whig theory. If the function
of M.P .s is to defend the interests of their constituents the election
may be seen as part of a process whereby delegated representatives
are chosen and instructed. But if the function of M.P .s is to govern
as they think best then the election may well be regarded as an
act of authorization, on Hobbesian lines. Willis came very near to
saying this when he remarked (in the passage quoted above) that
after an election the electors' 'whole power is then devolved upon
us'.
During the nineteenth century this concept of elective repre-
sentation achieved general acceptance in Britain as embodying the
correct view of the role of Parliament. Its acceptance is shown in
the rules of parliamentary privilege, according to which electors
may pass requests to their M.P. but may be committing an offence
if they give him an instruction backed by the threat of sanctions.
And, as will be seen, the concept has also been accepted in many
other countries.

Early American ideas about representation

As has often been remarked, the ideas and actions of the
men who led the American colonies to independence were in some
respects quite revolutionary and in other respects rather conserva-
tive. Thomas Jefferson believed that the development of represen-
tative institutions in America fell into the former category. In r8o2
he declared in a letter to Governor Hall that: 'We have the same
object, the success of representative government. Nor are we act-
ing for ourselves alone, but for the whole human race. The event
of our experiment is to show whether man can be trusted with
 Early American ideas about representation/41
self-government.'13 And in 1816 he wrote in a letter to I. H.
Tiffany that: 'The full experiment of government democratical,
but representative, was and still is reserved for us . . . The intro-
duction of this new principle of representative democracy has
rendered useless almost everything written before on the structure
of government; and in a great measure relieves our regret if the
political writings of Aristotle, or any other ancient, have been
lost.' 14 But although the Americans extended the practice of elec-
tion further than any other nation had done, the novelty of their
ideas about representation is open to question and worth
examination.
Under the colonial system, the British government controlled
foreign affairs and defence and also controlled certain lands in the
colonies through the governors, who were of course appointed by
the Crown. The Imperial Parliament passed laws relating to citizen-
ship, currency, trade, and navigation. The colonial legislatures
were responsible for laws on all other matters. According to British
constitutional theory these local assemblies were subordinate to
the British Parliament, which enjoyed sovereign power over all
His Majesty's territories. But in practice the colonies had achieved
a large measure of internal self-government long before 176o, not
only because the Board of Trade and the British Parliament were
generally content with this state of affairs but also because it often
took several months for a report to reach London and several more
months for a reply to reach the governor concerned.15
When George III and his ministers tried to extend their control
over the colonies in the 176os they were therefore attempting to
reverse the tide of history. A workable system had grown up
which, 'with occasional adaptions to the shifting needs of empire,
might have continued to function indefinitely'. 16 But the attempt
to impose taxes on the colonists without their consent provoked a
crisis which could have been foreseen. The British had the law on
their side but the facts favoured the colonists, and the slogan 'no
taxation without representation' proved an effective rallying cry.
The years leading up to the revolution were marked by a debate
in which the two sides hardly spoke the same language, the British
talking in terms of logic and legal theory while the Americans
talked in terms of common sense and experience and historical
precedent.
42/The Birth of Representative Government
The Declaration of Independence, which followed the final
breakdown of the debate, justified the revolution partly by citing
the particular grievances of the colonists against George III and
partly by appealing to general principles. These principles were
not novel, as Jefferson acknowledged; 17 they were derived from
the writings of Locke, Sidney and other writers of the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries who had suggested that natural law and
natural rights were discoverable by reason. But the superb elegance
of Jefferson's prose ensured that the opening paragraphs of the
Declaration would ring down the ages as an expression of revolu-
tionary faith.
The colonists declared their independence of the king, but not
of Parliament, for they did not accept that they had been subject
to Parliament. In each state new governors were elected to replace
those who had been appointed by the Crown. The title was retained
and so, after a number of brief experiments, was the general
character of the relationship between the governor and the state
assembly, so that the separation of executive and legislative powers
which had been a feature of the colonial system was perpetuated
as a permanent characteristic of American state government. Mter
only a little discussion at the Philadelphia Convention, a similar
kind of system was embodied in the federal constitution.
What view did the American leaders take of the role of elected
representatives? The first answer to this question is that they did
not subscribe to the Whig view which had gained widespread
acceptance in Britain. They expected members of legislative
assemblies to act as delegates of their constituents, and favoured
frequent elections to prevent the representatives acquiring too
much independence. Writing of the House of Representatives in
1788, the author of Paper 52 of The Federalist (either Hamilton or
Madison) said it was essential that representatives should 'have an
immediate dependence on, and an intimate sympathy with, the
people. Frequent elections are unquestionably the only policy by
which this dependence and sympathy can be effectually secured.' 18
Jefferson was of the same opinion, declaring that members of
legislative assemblies should have to submit themselves 'to appro-
bation or rejection at short intervals' and saying that the executive
(by which he meant a state governor or the president) must be
'chosen in the same way •.. by those whose agent he is to be' ,19
 Early Amer£can ideas about representation/43
Moreover, the authors of The Federalist assumed that elected
representatives would regard it as their function to promote
sectional interests and thought it to be one of the characteristics of
good government that a large number of these interests should be
represented, so that no one of them would be in a commanding
position. 20
While at one level this view resembled the traditional English
view to which many eighteenth-century Tories still subscribed, it
had of course a different theoretical foundation. In Tory eyes the
king was the ultimate authority in the land whereas in American
eyes sovereignty belonged to the people. Representative institu-
tions were thought desirable not as a means of checking the power
of the government but as a substitute for direct democracy, as a
means whereby the people could in some sense 'govern themselves'.
And this raises a question. If the English Whigs believed that
Parliament could only act in pursuance of the national interest if
its members were somewhat protected from local pressures and
instructions, why did the American revolutionaries take the
opposite view about Congress?
One answer to this is that they had a different set of values.
They were far more radical than the Whigs and they subscribed
to a radical theory of representation that had an English counter-
part in the ideas of some nineteenth-century writers. The implica-
tions of this radical view of repr~entation will be discussed later.
The other answer is that the United States Constitution provided
for an elected chief executive who would be responsible for inter-
preting the national interest and who would be sheltered from
local pressures not only by his eminence but also by the indirect
manner by which he was to be elected. As Hamilton put it, the
electoral college system would ensure that the president would be
chosen 'by men most capable of analysing the qualities adapted
to the station, and acting under circumstances favourable to
deliberation, and to a judicious combination of all the reasons and
inducements which were proper to govern their choice'.21 This
made it easier for the Founding Fathers to envisage a congress
which would reflect popular and local pressures more fairly
directly than would have been the case had the constitution pro-
vided for a system of parliamentary government in which the
assembly controlled the executive.
44/The Birth of Representative Government
The French Revolution
In France the decades immediately preceding the revolution
were distinguished by a veritable ferment ofintellectual controversy
about political and social questions. It was an age of discontent
with existing institutions, faith in the powers of reason to indicate
improvements, and optimism about the future. As Isaiah Berlin
has said: 'Never again was there so much confidence as in the
eighteenth century; Helvetius and Condillac, Holbach and Con-
dorcet and, in a more qualified degree, Diderot and Turgot,
Voltaire and d'Alembert, believed that they were living on the
threshold of a new age, within sight of the ideal ending.' 22 And not
only were they confident, they were influential. Their ideas helped
to inspire the French revolutionaries and to some extent they 'have
shaped the social and philosophical thinking and the political
institutions of the western world'.2a
Of course, not all of their writings were profound. Their collec-
tive output was immense, some of them were essayists rather than
philosophers, and in the literature as a whole a number of original
and penetrating contributions to political thought are accompanied
by a great deal of eloquent moralizing. In as far as they were con-
cerned with immediate political problems their main themes were
the desirability of justice, freedom of speech and freedom of
worship, their main worry being the poor showing of France in
these respects when compared with England and its even poorer
showing when measured against their ideals. All were in favour of
political reform, but only a few of them wrote in specific terms
about representative institutions.
Of these, the most profound was Montesquieu, with his acute
sense of history and his shrewd generalizations about the ways in
which social and institutional factors restricted the choices avail-
able to politicians without determining which one they would
make. He is of course best known for his theory that political
liberty is only likely to flourish where there is a separation of powers
among the executive, the legislature and the judiciary. His desire
for his own country was that it should evolve into a limited mon-
archy on British lines.
Helvetius was original in a different way; an early utilitarian
from whom Bentham derived the principle of 'the greatest happi-
ness of the greatest number' as a criterion of good legislation.
 The French Revolution/45
Helvetius favoured representative government so that all interests
in society could have a voice in the making oflaws. Ifsome groups
were excluded the 'equilibrium of forces' would be upset and the
privileged groups would promote their own interests at the expense
of everyone else. But it should be noted that Helvetius did not
believe that the franchise should be extended to the poor and the
ignorant, for he did not think they had any interests worth defend-
ing. A good case could be made for the redistribution of wealth
by the state, but until that was done the propertyless should
remain voteless.
Here, then, were two entirely different approaches to the analysis
of politics which had a certain similarity in their practical implica-
tions, for both advocated a balanced constitution in which legis-
lation would be controlled by an elected assembly which would
represent the propertied classes.
The social and political problems which contributed to the
revolutionary situation in France are not direcdy relevant to this
study, but the precipitating factor involved the question of political
representation. In 1787 the finance minister attempted to secure
agreement to a reform of the taxation system and a new tax on
land. Since these proposals were known to be unpopular with the
provincial Parlements, they were put to an Assembly of Notables
specially convened for the purpose, but this body rejected the pro-
posals and stated that only the Parlements (or possibly the Estates-
General) had authority to approve them. 24 On being asked, the
Parlement of Paris rejected the proposed land tax and declared that
only the Estates-General could register such a tax. In the following
year the king issued a number of edicts, one effect of which was to
transfer some of the powers of the provincial Parlements to a court
whose members were nominated by the king. This move led to
public agitation and riots; the national exchequer became so
depleted that debts had to be repaid in proper money; and in
August 1788 the new finance minister yielded to opinion and
agreed to a meeting of the Estates-General.
There was then a lively controversy about how the Estates-
General should vote. It was agreed that on this occasion the Third
Estate should have as many members as the other two Estates put
together, but the official line was that voting should be (as in the
past) by order rather than by head, with a majority in each of the
46/The Birth of Representative Government
three Estates required for a motion to pass. Under the inspired
leadership of the Abbe Sieyes, the radicals moved in a few months
from the claim that voting should be by head to the claim that only
the Third Estate counted, since it in fact represented the entire
nation.
Sieyes was one of the cleverest politicians of the revolution, who
not only took a leading role in the early days but survived to the
end, having seen most of his colleagues go to the guillotine in the
intervening period. He was also a brilliant propagandist, whose
long pamphlet Qu'est-ce que le Tiers Etat? bears comparison with
the Communist Manifesto. His argument that the representatives of
the Third Estate represented the entire nation was much more
direct than Marx's claim that the proletariat was the symbolic
representative of all humanity. Sieyes defined a nation as 'a body
of associates living under common laws and represented by the same
legislative assembly'. 25 Since members of the nobility (and the
clergy also) possessed legal privileges and exemptions they were
not bound by the laws of the land and could not therefore be part
of the nation. By claiming these privileges the nobility made them-
selves foreigners, not entitled to consideration as part of the nation
and not even entitled to stand for election as representatives of the
Third Estate.
Under the guidance of Sieyes and his colleagues, the Third
Estate was transformed into the National Assembly and, having
gained control, the revolutionaries set out their ideas. In July 1789
Sieyes 'induced the Assembly to declare that deputies were not
bound by the instructions of their constituents',26 a statement that
was repeated in the 'Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the
Citizen' a few weeks later. The constitution of 1791 declared that
sovereignty resided in the nation, stated that the National Assem-
bly embodied the will of the nation, and said clearly that 'the
representatives elected in the departments will not be representa-
tives of a particular department but of the whole nation, and they
may not be given any mandate'.
This was the French equivalent of the Whig theory of repre-
sentation and its adoption marked a turning point in European
ideas about representation. Always before the political representa·
tive had been viewed on the continent as a delegate, so that there
were three parties in the representative process: the principal, the
 Conclusions/47
representative, and the party or authority to whom representations
were to be made. According to the new theory of the revolution-
aries, political representatives were no longer to be thought of as
intermediaries of this kind but were to contrive, in their collective
capacity, to act as the voice of the nation and so to represent both
the government and the governed. This has led Sartori to make
the paradoxical comment that as soon as the French representatives
were given the name of 'deputies' they ceased (in theory) to depu-
tize for anyone. 27 An English writer may perhaps be forgiven for
thinking that Hobbes provided the key to this paradox: the position
of deputies in this French theory must surely be that they are
authorized by the process of election to speak and act in the name
of the nation. But there is clearly room for argument about this
view of political representation and it is because of this that so
much controversy has arisen about the role of elected representa-
tives in a national assembly.
While this theory was the most important legacy of the French
revolution to Em;opean ideas about representation, some brief
mention must also be made of Robespierre's attempt to gain
acceptance for a more radical view of politics. The new constitu-
tion that was accepted by the Convention in 1793 extended the
franchise and declared that: 'The people is sovereign; the govern-
ment is its work and its property; the public functionaries are its
clerks.' This doctrine had different implications for the theory of
representation, but Robespierre's dominance was short-lived and
this kind of radicalism did not long survive his execution. 28

Conclusions
The revolutions in these three countries were in many
respects quite dissimilar. The underlying causes were different, as
were the political attitudes, the personal conflicts, and the dimen-
sions of the upheaval. But there was an interesting point of
similarity in the chain of events involving the representative
system. In each case the precipitating factor was an attempt to
impose extra taxes which was thought to need the agreement of the
existing representative assemblies. In each case opposition on the
part of these assemblies led to a series of conflicts and confronta-
tions of which the eventual outcome was a decisive shift in the
48/The Birth of Representative Government
locus of political power. By the end of the eighteenth century
representative government had come to stay (with certain minor
vicissitudes in France) in all three countries, from which repre-
sentative ideas and institutions have subsequently been exported
to the greater part of the world.
In this period of political change there emerged two concepts of
political representation. The more important and interesting is the
concept of the elected representative as an independent maker of
national policies, and with it the concept of the representative
assembly as a public authority whose power derives its legitimacy
from the fact that its members have gone through a process of
election, even though they have no obligation to take instructions
from their electors. The French constitutional provisions which
prohibited mandates and instructions were subsequently copied
or followed in the constitutions of most of the countries of western
Europe, including those of Belgium, 1831; Italy, 1848; Prussia,
1850; Sweden, 1866; Austria, 1867; Germany, 1871; Switzerland,
1874; the Netherlands, 1887; and Denmark, 1915. Similar pro-
visions are included in the 1948 constitution of Italy and the 1949
Basic Law of the German Federal Republic. The British position
is (as usual) slightly less clear, both because Britain has no written
constitution and because in a formal sense the British Parliament
includes the monarch as well as the House of Lords and the House
of Commons. But in British constitutional law sovereignty is
firmly vested in Parliament, there being no mention of the people,
and the conventions of Parliament make clear that specific instruc-
tions should not be given to M.P .s.
The other concept that emerged is the radical notion that sover-
eignty rests with the people and political representatives are the
people's agents. This is the view that prevailed among the majority
(though not among all) of the leaders of the American revolution.
Thus the second article of the Virginia Declaration of Rights,
proclaimed in 1776, stated: 'That all power is vested in, and con-
sequently derived from, the people; that magistrates are their
trustees and servants, and at all times amenable to them.'
The preamble to the U.S. Constitution is phrased in the form:
'We, the people of the United States ... do ordain and establish
this Constitution.' And when Washington relinquished the presi-
dency he delivered to the entire nation his Farewell Address which
 Conclusions/49
began with the words 'Friends and Fellow-citizens'. Although this
view of politics was propagated by Tom Paine and viewed sym-
pathetically by Robespierre, the seed did not fall on fertile ground
and the idea never took firm hold in Europe. Radical spokesmen
in Britain and elsewhere have sometimes referred to it, but as a
working concept of government it is exclusively American.
4/Eiective
Representation
and the Franchise

Before the effective establishment of representative govern-

ment in Britain, America and France, the main constitutional issues
had revolved around the relations between the monarchy and the
other institutions of government. But after representative govern-
ment had been achieved the composition of the representative
assembly became of central importance and there were frequent
and sometimes prolonged controversies about the franchise. In the
twentieth century these controversies are no longer of much prac-
tical interest, since nearly all countries with representative institu-
tions have adopted universal suffrage and the desirability of this
has become an article of faith, shared by people whose political
creeds have hardly anything else in common. But during the
debates on the franchise several different views were expressed
about the nature of elective representation and the role of elected
representatives, and these concepts of representation have acquired
a life of their own and have a continuing influence on political
thought and behaviour. It is therefore essential to extract these
from the debates and to identify their nature.
As it happens, the discussions on the franchise were more pro-
longed and elaborate in Britain than anywhere else. In France there
were two periods of sudden change: the first in 1789-91, when the
three Estates were abolished and the middle classes acquired
power; the second in 1848 when the suffrage was extended to all
male citizens. In the United States the suffrage has been con-
trolled by state legislatures, not by Congress, and the various local
debates on the relaxation of the property qualifications in the early
decades of the Union were conducted in practical rather than
theoretical terms. But in Britain the question of electoral reform
was a central issue of national politics for more than a century and
the debate (which attracted political theorists as well as practising
politicians) achieved a high level of sophistication. For this reason,
so
 The concept of virtual representation/51
most of the illustrative material in this chapter will be drawn from
British writings.

The concept of virtual representation

This interesting and (for a time) influential concept was
propounded by the English Whigs in the eighteenth century and
was used to defend the very narrow franchise of the unreformed
House of Commons. In that House the landowners were repre-
sented by two members for each county (the knights of the shires)
while merchants and manufacturers were represented by the
members for those towns that happened to have been incorporated
as parliamentary boroughs. This was never a system in which
representation bore a close relationship to population and by the
end of the century the industrial revolution had created a large
number of new towns (including Manchester, Birmingham and
Sheffield) which had no representatives of their own, while a
number of old parliamentary boroughs retained their M.P.s
although only a handful of citizens still lived there.
According to the theory of virtual representation this did not
matter, for the interests of places such as Manchester and Sheffield
were virtually represented by the members for other industrial
cities. It was important that the House should contain some mem-
bers from industrial cities, so that industrial interests would be
taken into account in parliamentary deliberations, but there was
no need for each city to have its own man at Westminster. This was
an entirely logical view, given the Whig belief that taking account
of an interest was different from promoting an interest. If M.P .s
were regarded as delegated representatives, as in many Tory and
some radical views, then their function was to promote the interests
of their constituents and the concept of virtual representation was
meaningless. But if they were elective representatives whose task
was to pursue the national interest, all that was necessary was that
they should be aware of the special problems of industrial areas,
and the existing members for Liverpool and Leicester could inform
the House of these problems just as well as new members for cities
such as Manchester.
It is true that as the movements of population increased and the
demands for parliamentary reform grew louder, many Whigs lent
their support to the reformers. But this does not mean that they
52/Elective Representation and the Franchise
changed their views about the nature of political representation.
Some supported the cause of reform because they thought a modest
change might stave off the demands for more radical changes,
while others believed that reform might improve the quality of the
House. Sir George Comewall Lewis, for instance, produced a
characteristically Whig argument when he said that 'it is not more
expedient that a large town should be represented rather than a
small town because its interests will be watched by its own dele-
gate; but because it is more likely to send a good representative to
the national councils'. 1

Representing the people

The assumptions of the Whigs were challenged by two
groups of radical reformers, both composed of theorists and publi-
cists rather than of practical politicians. The first group consisted
of people who embraced the doctrine of popular sovereignty,
mainly (though not entirely) as a result of the influence of French
and American ideas. In 1769 the first truly radical political organ-
ization was formed in the shape of the Society of Supporters of
the Bill of Rights, which demanded equal constituencies and annual
Parliaments and proposed that M.P.s should follow the instructions
of their constituents. In 1776 John Wilkes introduced the first
motion for parliamentary reform in the House of Commons,
claiming that the people were the source of political authority and
that manhood suffrage should be instituted. In the following five
years this claim was repeated by a number of newly established
political societies, one of which (the Sub-Committee of West-
minster) demanded not only manhood suffrage but also equal
representation, the secret ballot, annual Parliaments and the
payment of members.
In the same period two middle-class dissenters, Joseph Priestley
and Richard Price, developed political ideas based on the theories
of Rousseau. Priestley portrayed civil government as having been
established by a social contract in which men surrendered part of
their natural freedom in return for a certain degree of influence on
government decisions. All citizens were therefore entitled to
political representation, and could not be obliged to obey the laws
unless it were granted to them. 2 Price followed Rousseau more
closely, arguing that in a truly free state every man would give his
 Reflecting society/53
personal consent to the laws. Representative government was the
next best thing, but sovereignty would remain with the people and
could not properly be claimed by Parliament. 3
These reformers were followed by Tom Paine, the Englishman
who became famous in America, returned to England to engage in
a pamphlet war with Edmund Burke, fled to France to escape
prosecution for sedition, and became a member of the Constitu-
tional Convention together with Sieyes, Danton, Condorcet, and
other leaders of the first phase of the French revolution. Paine's
direct style of writing had a wider appeal than that of any other
English radical and his books enjoyed a vast circulation among
working men, something like 2oo,ooo copies of The Rights of Man
being sold within two years of its publication.4 He believed firmly
in popular sovereignty, in representative government based on a
wide franchise, and in the right of citizens to revolt against other
forms of government. While he was not very explicit about either
the philosophical foundations of his arguments or the practical
operation of the forms of government he advocated, it is clear that
he thought of elected representatives as delegates of the people.
But in spite of the efforts of these writers and associations, the
doctrine of popular sovereignty never took firm hold in Britain.
Possibly a belief in natural rights is alien to the British tempera-
ment; possibly the doctrine was discredited in British eyes by its
use as a rallying-cry for revolution elsewhere; perhaps the middle
classes were too concerned about their property rights and privi-
leges to accept a doctrine according to which all men had equal
political (as distinct from legal) rights. Whatever the reasons, this
kind of theory-which on the other side of the Atlantic became the
basis of American democracy-has in Britain been no more than
the doctrine of outsiders, from the Painites to the Chartists.

Reflecting society
However, a different and peculiarly British set of radical
ideas not only acquired influence but led to the transformation of
British government during the nineteenth century. These were the
ideas of Jeremy Bentham, James Mill and the later Utilitarians who
accepted or modified their ideas on political matters.
Bentham was essentially a legal theorist who did not turn his
54/Elective Representation and the Franchise
attention to the question of political reform until he was in his late
fifties. As a legal theorist, he based his writings upon the radical
and apparently simple principle that laws were good if they in-
creased the sum total ofhuman happiness in society but bad if they
diminished it. By this criterion, many existing laws could be shown
to be deficient and many new laws could be shown to be desirable.
During the greater part of his life Bentham was content to point
this out, hoping that the rulers of the country (whoever they might
be) would have the wisdom to adopt this Utilitarian principle as
their own. However, during the first decade of the nineteenth
century Bentham became convinced (partly through personal
experience and partly through the influence of his friend Mill) that
this hope was illusory. Ministers and members of Parliament, he
came to believe, were subject like everyone else to the rule that
human beings try constantly to maximize their own happiness.
'Whatsoever evil it is possible for man to do for the advancement
of his own private and personal interest at the expense of the
public interest-that evil sooner or later he will do, unless by some
means or other, intentional or otherwise, he be prevented from
doing.' 5 As British politicians were drawn from a very small ruling
class the inevitable result of their self-seeking decisions would be
to promote the interests of this class at the expense of the rest of
society. Once Bentham was persuaded of this he threw himself into
the cause of parliamentary reform.
The purpose of reform, in his view, was to create a parliamentary
system in which legislators, in the course of promoting their own
interests and happiness, would automatically maximize the happi-
ness of the population as a whole. To this end there should be
manhood suffrage, not because people had a natural right to politi-
cal representation-Bentham regarded the idea of natural rights as
nonsensical-but because only in this way would the personal
interests of the whole population be reflected in the legislature.
There should also be annual elections, to keep M.P .s in close con-
tact with their constituents and to ensure that they did not have
sufficient time to develop distinct interests of their own in their
capacity as politicians. The monarchy and the House of Lords
should be stripped of their powers, if not abolished, and the effect-
ive power of decision-making should be concentrated in this
reformed House of Commons. If the system were reformed in
 Reflecting society/55
these ways it could be assumed that a decision supported by a
majority of elected representatives would be in the interests of the
majority of citizens and would therefore increase the sum total of
happiness in society.
These ideas were expounded by Bentham in a number of
writings between 1809 and 1832 and they were also set out, some-
what more clearly, in the Essay on GO'lJernment which James Mill
wrote in 1820. Mill's basic assumption about human behaviour
was the same as Bentham's: 'It is indisputable that the acts of men
follow their will, that their will follows their desires, and that their
desires are generated •.• by their interests.' 6 Because of this the
legislative assembly 'must have an identity of interest with the
community, otherwise it will make a mischievous use ofits power'. 7
At the same time it must be recognized that each member of this
assembly would acquire -certain personal interests in this capacity,
which he would have the power to promote. To prevent him
abusing his power in this way, things must be so arranged that 'in
his capacity of representative it would be impossible for him to do
himself as much good by misgovernment as he would do himself
harm in his capacity of member of the community'. s Frequent
elections would achieve this end, for 'the smaller the period of
time during which any man retains his capacity of representative,
as compared with the time in which he is simply a member of the
community, the more difficult it will be to compensate the sacrifice
of the interests of the longer period by the profits of misgovern-
ment during the shorter'. 9
Now this concept of representation is essentially microcosmic.
The members of the representative assembly are not to act as
trustees for the nation, nor are they to act as delegates for local
interests, nor are they to embody the sovereignty of the nation.
Their essential function is to constitute, in themselves, a microcosm
of the nation, so that if (leaving aside their temporary and peculiar
interests as politicians) they pursue their personal interests, they
will reach decisions which will maximize the happiness of the
whole community.
This theory of representation is open to criticism on many
grounds, and since the theory has had a good deal of influence it is
appropriate to indicate some of the objections that can be made to
it. In the first place, Bentham's basic assumptions are questionable.
56/Elective Representation and the Franchise
As a matter of common observation, it is not true that people are
always self-seeking, and Bentham's attempt to get round this by
saying that he was altruistic because it gave him pleasure is not
really convincing. Moreover, the Utilitarian theory of ethics pro-
vides no explanation of how moral rules arise in society and its
attempt to equate goodness with the maximization of pleasure
obliterates a distinction which people in nearly all societies have
thought important. It is not only that men commonly think it
right to put honour, the keeping of promises, and the well-being
of others before the advancement of personal interests; it is also
that the concept of morality has nearly always been taken to involve
intentions as well as consequences.
Of course, it may be said that the Utilitarian theory can be
accepted as a legitimate view of how men ought to behave even
though it cannot be justified in the manner attempted by Bentham
and Mill. But it is not difficult to think of examples in which the
theory would lead to conclusions which most people would find
unacceptable. For instance, after the assassination of President
Kennedy it was manifestly desirable for the happiness and peace
of mind of the American people that the culprit should be identi-
fied and that it should be made clear that he had acted independ-
ently rather than as part of an undetected conspiracy. Since the
chief suspect was dead before the Warren Commission began its
enquiries, the application of the rule of 'the greatest happiness of
the greatest number' would lead to the conclusion that it would
have been right for the Commission to portray Lee Oswald as the
sole criminal, whether or not the evidence justified this. It is not
suggested that the Commission did in fact behave in this manner;
only that the Utilitarian theory would seem a quite inadequate
guide to justice and morality in such a situation.
To take another example, there are at present many thousands
of Asian settlers in East Mrica who have British passports but are
not permitted by British law to settle in Britain. It is apparently in
the interests of the African citizens of Kenya and Uganda that
these people should be deprived of the right to work so that their
jobs may be available to Africans; apparently in the interests of the
British that the Asians should be kept out of Britain; and apparently
in the interests of the people of India and Pakistan that these
unhappy migrants should not be allowed back into their countries
 Reflecting society/57
of origin. If the politicians' assessment of interests is correct, it
would seem to be entirely moral and proper by Utilitarian standards
for these settlers, who have committed no crime, to be forced into
destitution.
The Utilitarian theory could perhaps be rescued from this
position if full account could be taken of the differences in the
intensity with which pleasures and pains are felt. Bentham was
fully aware of the need to take account of differences in intensity
and made this quite clear in his Principles of Morals and Legislation.
But there are both practical and theoretical difficulties about this.
The practical difficulty is that it is impossible to measure intensity
so that it could be accurately reflected in the legislative process,
which Bentham admitted in his later writings on parliamentary
reform. The theoretical problem is that taking full account of
intensity would mean accepting that there were circumstances in
which the objections of one man to a proposed policy should out-
weigh the favourable votes of everyone else. This would arise in
the case of a man whose life or liberty or means of sustenance were
put in serious jeopardy by a policy which would suit the conven-
ience of his fellow-citizens without saving anyone else's life, liberty
or livelihood. But if it were accepted that intensity could be
multiplied by an infinite factor the result would be equivalent to
saying that men have a natural right to life, liberty and livelihood,
and this is a position to which Bentham had the strongest philo-
sophical objections.
To these basic weaknesses of the Utilitarian theory of politics
must be added the practical difficulty of ever achieving a repre-
sentative assembly of the kind Bentham and Mill envisaged. They
used their model as an argument for manhood suffrage or some-
thing very near to it. As Mill said, 'the benefits of the representa-
tive system are lost in all cases in which the interests of the choosing
body are not the same with those of the community'.10 But a
random sample cannot be secured by calling for volunteers,
particularly when the job in question requires unusual ambitions
and talents and rewards them with poor financial prospects and a
very low degree of security. There is no country in which com-
petitive elections based on manhood suffrage have produced an
assembly which could fairly be described as a social microcosm of
the nation: lawyers and one or two other professions are invariably
58/Elect£ve Representat£on and the Franch£se
over-represented and manual workers are invariably under-
represented.
For all these reasons, the main function of the Benthamite
theory in political debate has been to serve as a criterion for
criticism-a standard by which existing institutions can be
measured and found wanting. In nineteenth-century Britain
Benthamite arguments proved very effective in the long debate
about the reform of the system of parliamentary elections. By
these standards the unreformed Parliament was grotesquely un-
representative of the country and an extension of the franchise
could be, and was, advocated as a way of improving Parliament
without it being necessary for the reformers to invoke the danger-
ous doctrine of natural rights. Successive extensions of the fran-
chise made Parliament more representative without it ever
becoming, in Benthamite terms, truly representative.
This criterion is still sometimes used as a basis for criticizing
Parliament by writers whose attitude may properly be described
as neo-Benthamite, since they adopt this line of argument without
committing themselves to the Utilitarian viewpoint in its entirety.
A notable example is J. F. S. Ross, who devoted two books to an
analysis of the composition of the House of Commons (both
before and after the Second World War) in order to demonstrate
its unrepresentative nature. One of his conclusions was that people
under the age of forty were 'severely under-represented';11 another
was that 'elementary schools have less than a quarter of their
proportionate representation'; 12 a third was that 'rank-and-file
workers have little more than one-third of their proportionate
share of the membership, while the unoccupied have three times
..• and the professional workers more than twelve times as many
Members as their respective numbers in the community would
justify'.13
The other side of the coin is the occasional invocation of the
same concept of representation to defend the status quo, of which
two examples may be given. The first is the comment in a Times
leading article, relating to a proposal to increase M.P .s' salaries,
that 'the House of Commons should be the microcosm of the
nation and this it can never be if the great bulk of its members are
professional politicians' .14 The second is Lord Boothby's observa-
tion in an unscripted radio programme that: 'Ideally, the House of
 Reflecting society/59
Commons should be a social microcosm of the nation. The nation
includes a great many people who are rather stupid, and so should
the House.' 15 In 1970 a Republican senator made a less precise
remark in a similar vein about the U.S. Supreme Court when
President Nixon nominated a judge who was said to have a
mediocre record.
As this last example indicates, this microcosmic concept of
representation can be used to assess any body of men who wield
political influence, whether or not they have been elected. Over
the past thirty-five years a series of academic critics have com-
plained that the members of the administrative class of the British
civil service are drawn from an unduly narrow section of society.
Professors such as Herman Finer, H. J. Laski, H. R. G. Greaves,
and R. K. Kelsall have shown that higher civil servants are re-
cruited predominantly from middle-class families and have argued
that this is unfortunate. 16 A similar kind of complaint has been
made about the boards of management of nationalized industries.
A leading trade unionist has observed that the members of the
British Transport Commission do not constitute 'a typical or
representative cross-section of British society' 17 and, after widening
his study to include the other nationalized industries, the same
writer has noted that 'directors of public companies constitute one
of the smallest occupational groups in modem society. Yet they
have by far the largest representation.' 18 When rioting broke out
in Northern Ireland in 1969 many people said that since the Royal
Ulster Constabulary was unrepresentative of the society, being
composed almost entirely of Protestants, the Roman Catholic com-
munity could not be expected to trust it.
Viewed in the clear light of logic, most of these criticisms seem
somewhat dubious, for it is not to be expected that the members of
any highly specialized institution will be drawn equally from all
sections of society and it is open to argument whether they need to
be, provided they do their job efficiently. But the Benthamite
argument contains a kernel of truth that makes it likely to find
sympathizers in any society where social divisions are thought to
have political significance. The divisions regarded as most sig-
nificant naturally vary from one country to another. In England
divisions of class and occupation predominate in people's con-
sciousness, whereas in Northern Ireland they are overshadowed by
6o/Elective Representation and the Franchise
the issue of religion. In the United States class decisions are not
regarded as politically important and nobody objects to the fact
that most members of Congress are prosperous lawyers. Ethnic
divisions, on the other hand, are vitally important and are taken
account of at all levels of political activity. In recent decades this
concem with the representation of ethnic minorities has even
extended to the Supreme Court, which is now expected to contain
one Negro, one Jewish and one Catholic member. In Canada the
English/French division dominates political life and is reflected in
the composition of the Parliament, the cabinet and nearly all
official committees. In the new state.;; of Africa tribal divisions are
crucial and in Malaysia the representation of the Chinese and
Indian communities is one of the central issues of politics. What-
ever the limitations of Jeremy Bentham's philosophy, one of his
evident achievements was to elaborate a concept of political repre-
sentation which, in simplified form, has come to play a vital part in
the political debates of the modem world.

Acting as trustees for the nation

The most widely accepted view of the role of members of
the legislative assembly in France after 1789 and in Britain after
1832 was that they were elected representatives acting as trustees
for the nation. The idea that they were agents for their estates or
communities or counties had died with the abolition of the Estates-
General and the replacement of the old parliamentary system
which represented boroughs and shires by the reformed system
which, in principle, simply represented the citizens of the country.
This being so, there was no logical and self-evident reason why
some citizens should be given the vote and others denied it. How-
ever, there were obvious political reasons for drawing such a
distinction; the middle classes who had acquired or were acquiring
power from the aristocracy hardly wanted to share it with Inillions
of poor and uneducated labourers. So in France until 1848 and in
Britain throughout the nineteenth century there were debates
about the propriety or wisdom of enfranchising people who owned
little property or were not thought to have sufficient education to
make intelligent use of their votes.
At this point some facts will be helpful. In Britain the great
Reform Act of 1832, important though it was in changing the basis
 Acting as trustees for the nation/61
of representation, increased the electorate only from 5 per cent to
7 per cent of the adult population. The second Reform Act of 1867
more or less doubled the electorate; the Act of 1884 made another
sizeable advance; but it was not until 1918 that manhood suffrage
was established. Until that year there were property qualifications
of one kind or another, so that it can fairly be said that for the
greater part of the nineteenth century the British electorate was
predominantly middle-class. The exclusion of most manual
workers was not thought to need elaborate justification by the
politicians of the time: it was an age when British institutions were
believed to be superior to all others and the revolutions in France
and the reports of political corruption that emanated from America
did nothing to disturb this belief. When justification was demanded
it was offered in two forms: that those without property did not
have a stake in the community and that the poor were too ignorant
to be entrusted with the franchise.
Liberal reformers rarely challenged these arguments outright.
Many reformers believed that the franchise should be extended
only gradually, while their more radical colleagues understood the
fears of the middle classes and sought to allay them. The most
notable effort to do this was made by James Mill in his Essay on
G()'l)ernment. This was published as a supplement to the Encyclo-
paedia Britannica, the readers of which must have been almost en-
tirely middle-class. Mill's method of reassuring them was to assert
that the lower classes, if enfranchised, would inevitably take their
political opinions from 'The most wise and virtuous part of the
community, the middle rank.' 19 His argument is worth quoting in
full.

• .. the opinions of that class of the people who are below

the middle rank are formed, and their minds are directed by
that intelligent, that virtuous rank who come the most im-
mediately in contact with them, who are in the constant
habit of intimate communication with them, to whom they
fly for advice and assistance in all their numerous difficulties,
upon whom they feel an immediate and daily dependence in
health and in sickness, in infancy and in old age; to whom
their children look up as models for their imitation, whose
opinions they hear daily repeated and account it their
62./Elective Representation and the Franchise
honour to adopt. There can be no doubt that the middle
rank, which gives to science, to art, and to legislation itself
their most distinguished ornaments, and is the chief source
of all that has exalted and refined human nature, is that
portion of the community of which, if the basis of repre-
sentation were ever so far extended, the opinion would
ultimately decide. Of the people beneath them a vast
majority would be sure to be guided by their advice and
example.20

Mill's position was that it would be safe as well as desirable

to enfranchise the working classes, whose interests would other-
wise be overlooked by the representative assembly. But in the
Essay he deliberately avoided coming down unequivocally on the
side of manhood suffrage, saying that it would be reasonable to
exclude men under forty (on the ground that older men, the great
majority of whom would have children, could be entrusted to pro-
tect the interests of younger men) and suggesting in a rather am-
biguous passage that it would probably do no harm to have a
property qualification, provided it were low enough to ensure that
the majority of men over forty qualified. In practice his eulogy of
the middle class proved more acceptable than his recommendations.
Politicians were reluctant to risk political stability (and their own
careers) by banking on the validity of Mill's hypothesis about the
readiness of working-class voters to accept middle-class leadership,
and when some workers were eventually given the vote the step
was taken by Disraeli, hoping that they would be attracted less
by the moral virtues of the middle-class Liberals than by the
paternalism and imperialism of the Conservatives.
In France the revolutionary constitution-makers established a
two-tier system of election with two levels of property qualification.
About 6o per cent of adult males qualified as 'active citizens' and
were given the right to choose delegates who, in each department,
would elect departmental councillors and members of the Legis-
lative Assembly. But delegates had to be chosen from among men
who satisfied the higher qualification and these included only about
7 per cent of adult males. This arrangement was not justified
overtly in terms of social class. 'The constitution-makers of the
Revolution considered that the nation had the right to confer the
 Acting as trustees for the nation/63
task of voting on persons who could perform it properly' and 'the
property qualifications were presented as the means of securing an
elite competent to act as trustees of the nation'. 21 Nevertheless, the
consequence of the franchise laws was to give the middle classes an
effective grip on the electoral system and this grip was tightened
by the first Napoleonic constitution of 1799. 22 It was tightened still
further by the electoral law of 1817, which introduced direct
elections but confined the franchise to approximately the same
small fraction of the population who had qualified as potential
delegates under the Constitution of 1791. But in 1848 the Repub-
licans introduced manhood suffrage and direct national elections at
one fell swoop, and this system has not subsequently been chal-
lenged.
At this point, attention must be drawn to a point of conceptual
interest about Napoleon's electoral system. As noted earlier, the
Constitution of 1791 gave formal expression to a purely political
concept of representation that was new to France, though it was
implicit in the ideas of the English Whigs. Under this constitution,
the deputies were not instrumental representatives or microcosmic
representatives or symbolic representatives but simply elected
representatives, whose status rested on the twin foundations that
(a) they had been chosen by a constitutional process of election and
(b) they were formally charged with the duty of representing and
promoting the interests of the French nation. Under the Napoleonic
system, the first of these foundations was partially removed, for
while the electoral process produced a national list of about 5,000
persons who were eligible to hold office, the members of the two
legislative chambers were chosen from this list by the Senate,
whose members were nominated by Napoleon. It can be argued
that members chosen in this way should not be described as repre-
sentatives, being (at least in the final stage) nominated from above
rather than elected from below. Certainly Napoleon and his close
associates were able to ensure that only safe men were appointed to
legislative chambers. But their control over the selection process
was no greater than the control Stalin and his associates enjoyed
over the election of members of the Supreme Soviet, all of whose
members were formally chosen by election in the constituencies,
and it can also be argued that to deny the title of representative
to persons whose election is controlled or rigged from above
64/Elective Representation and the Franchise
would limit the use of the term in an artificial and value-laden
fashion.
In the United States there was no national debate over the
franchise, though there were debates at state level. When the
federal constitution was ratified Pennsylvania gave the vote to all
adult white taxpayers while the other twelve states had a variety of
property qualifications. But these were not stringent in a land where
property ownership was more widespread than in Europe, and
from the beginning well over half the adult white population was
enfranchised. By the I83os the property qualification had been
abolished in many states and reduced in others, so that de Tocque-
ville was only exaggerating a little when he described it as a coun-
try where manhood suffrage and democracy had been achieved. By
the end of the Civil War property qualifications had disappeared
entirely save for small poll taxes in three northern states. And
though some southern states introduced poll taxes after the end of
the Reconstruction period this was done to disfranchise Negroes
rather than to disfranchise the poor: the poll taxes were low enough
to be afforded by most poor whites but they created an obstacle for
black people, both because of their extreme poverty and because of
the difficulties, including physical intimidation, they met with if
they attempted to pay the tax. The poll tax waned after the Second
World War and was finally abolished by a constitutional amend-
ment of 1964.

Ignorance as a bar to representation

The other justification that has sometimes been offered for
the restriction of the franchise is the ignorance of the working
classes. This was essentially a nineteenth-century argument, deriv-
ing such validity as it had from the liberal view of the electoral
process as one that ought to be dominated by reason. When repre-
sentation was thought of as essentially a means for the defence
and promotion of material interests, it could hardly be argued that
intelligence and education were relevant factors, but in the hey-day
of nineteenth-century liberalism the representative system was
seen as a means for the exercise of rational choice between alterna-
tive policies and alternative political leaders. In these circum-
stances it was certainly possible to argue that uneducated (and
possibly illiterate) citizens were incapable of reaching an informed
 Ignorance as a bar to representation/65
judgement and were therefore not entitled to claim the right to
vote. The reports that de Tocqueville and other writers brought
back from the United States lent some strength to this argument;
American democracy was portrayed as a rough and somewhat cor-
rupt form of government and commentators devised a new political
phrase to describe it, namely 'the tyranny of the majority'.
It is fair to say that this line of argument has rarely carried much
conviction. One reason for this is that in every society the ignorant
are also the poor, and it has never proved possible to persuade
them that their exclusion from the franchise was a consequence of
their ignorance rather than their poverty. Another reason is that
the two writers who discussed the problem most eloquently both
came down in the end in favour of a radical view about the
franchise, notwithstanding the dangers they saw in this policy.
Alexis de Tocqueville, aware as he was of the blemishes and
problems of American society, nevertheless admired the American
way of life and argued that the liberal franchise contributed, in no
small way, to the vitality of the people. He wrote:

It is incontestable that the people frequently conduct public

business very ill; but it is impossible that the people should
take a part in public business without extending the circle
of their ideas, and without quitting the ordinary routine of
their mental occupations. The humblest individual who is
called upon to co-operate in the government of society
acquires a certain degree of respect; and, as he possesses
power, minds more enlightened than his own offer him
their services .... He takes a part in political undertakings
which did not originate in his own conception, but which
give him a taste for such undertakings. New ameliorations
are daily suggested to him in the property which he holds
in common with others, and this gives him the desire of
improving that property which is peculiarly his own. He is,
perhaps, neither happier nor better than those who came
before him; but he is better informed and more active....
Not what is done by a democratic government, but what is
done under a democratic government by private agency,
is really great. Democracy does not confer the most skilful
kind of government upon the people, but it produces that
3
66/ Elective Representation and the Franchise
which the most skilful kind of governments are frequently
unable to awaken, namely, an all-pervading and restless
activity-a superabundant force-an energy which is never
seen elsewhere, and which may, under favourable circum-
stances, beget the most amazing benefits. These are the
true advantages of democracy. 2 s

John Stuart Mill was greatly influenced by de Tocqueville's

work and based his own case for the extension of the franchise
on similar arguments. A form of government, he said, is to be
judged partly by 'its actions upon men ... by what it makes of the
citizens, and what it does to them; its tendency to improve or
deteriorate the people themselves'. 24 In Mill's view a government
acts as 'an agency of national education' 26 as well as an administra-
tive agency, and an extended franchise could be justified in terms
of the first function even when it could not be justified in terms of
the second. In this view political participation became a good
thing in itself, which clearly marks a sharp departure from the
views of Mill's father and other early Utilitarians. They had seen
representation as a way of maximizing private benefits and looked
upon the act of voting as involving a small expenditure of time that
brought rewards to the citizens that made it worthwhile. The
younger Mill, on the other hand, was impressed with the com-
munal benefits that would flow from a political system which
would engage citizens in political activity; he regarded public par-
ticipation in the representative process as a means of civic educa-
tion and therefore of social progress. 26
In the climate of opinion of 1861, Mill did not recommend that
all citizens should immediately be enfranchised. He felt it right
to exclude those who were illiterate as well as those who, because
they paid no taxes, would 'have every motive to be lavish and none
to economise'.27 Everyone else should be given the vote, but to en-
sure that proper weight would be given to the views of the better
educated and more responsible members of the community Mill
recommended that skilled workers, foremen and all persons in pro-
fessional or managerial positions should have additional votes,
which would also be given to university graduates and persons
holding other approved educational qualifications. This ingenious
plan was never adopted in Britain, whose legislators preferred to
 Other limits to the franchise/67
liberalize the franchise by the simple method of relaxing the prop
erty qualifications. Almost exactly one hundred years after Mill
wrote, it was officially proposed that a system of plural voting on
the lines he had suggested should be adopted in Kenya as a trans-
lational measure; but this proposal was regarded by African leaders
as no more than a transparent device for maximizing the political
influence of Europeans and Asians and was quickly withdrawn.
In recent years another factor has come into play to discredit
the argument that education can be regarded as a necessary con-
dition of the right to vote. Research into voting behaviour since
1945 (which will be discussed in a later chapter) has tended to
undermine the liberal belief that elections are a process of rational
choice between alternative policies. The extent of party loyalties,
the widespread ignorance about political matters, the degree to
which people reject the policies of the parties for which they are
voting-all these and other discoveries have weakened belief in
the liberal model of the representative process. It remains true
that elections are occasions on which people exercise political
judgement but it is by no means clear that formal education is
necessary for the kind of judgement that is involved.
For all these reasons, the argument that ignorance is a bar to
representation has virtually disappeared from the political scene.
It made what must be one of its final appearances in the 1957
report of the Tredgold Commission in Southern Rhodesia, which
recommended that the franchise should be confined to those
citizens who could exercise it with 'reason, judgement and public
spirit'. The criteria the commission suggested for assessing this
capacity were ten years full-time education and an annual income
of at least £300. In practice everyone recognized this to be an
argument about race rather than one about education.

Other limits to the franchise28

So far in this chapter we have been concerned with argu-
ments about elective representation which have sprung from the
existence of horizontal divisions within society. These are, of
course, not the only divisions which have been thought to be
relevant and a rather different set of problems and requirements
have revolved around the existence of vertical divisions such as
68/Elective Representation and the Franchise
those of race and sex. These will be enumerated very briefly as, in
spite of their practical importance, they have not produced any
significant concepts of representation.
(t) Citizenship. It is normal to define the political com-
munity in terms of citizenship and the only country known to the
author which permits aliens to vote in national elections is the
United Kingdom, which extends this privilege to citizens of the
Republic of Ireland. This legally curious arrangement is a hang-
over from the period between the wars when Southern Ireland was
independent according to Irish law but a member of the British
Commonwealth according to British law, but the large number of
Irishmen who work in Britain are rarely regarded as foreigners and
in this sense the arrangement conforms to social realities.
There is also a somewhat anomalous position in Britain con-
cerning citizens of Commonwealth countries, who are entitled to
vote if they are in Britain on registration and polling days by virtue
of the fact that they are British subjects, even though they are not
U.K. citizens. To complicate the issue further, this would not apply
to a Canadian or Indian visitor who happened to be in Northern
Ireland on registration day, as in that province a residence quali-
fication of three months has been imposed to prevent citizens of the
Republic from crossing the border to vote in Northern Irish elec-
tions. But the concept of a 'British subject' has lost much of its
reality since it ceased (in 1962) to confer the right to take up resi-
dence in Britain, and it is to be expected that in due course the right
to vote (and perhaps the whole concept) will be eliminated.
Apart from the United Kingdom, the countries where there are
complications about citizenship are mainly ex-colonies which did
not have citizenship laws of their own until they acquired inde-
pendence. Many of these countries are slightly artificial as social
entities, are divided on racial lines, or have large numbers of recent
immigrants. In Malaya, for instance, nearly 40 per cent of the
population is Chinese, and when that country acquired indepen-
dence a special citizenship law was designed with the object of
ensuring that Chinese inhabitants acquired citizenship slowly and
only after long periods of residence. Put one way, this can be
described as a way of ensuring Malay dominance of the political
system; put another way, it can be described as part of an attempt
to build a multi-racial political community by easy stages. When
 Other limits to the franchise/69
Kenya achieved independence its Asian citizens were given the
choice of applying for either Kenyan citizenship or British citizen-
ship: those Asians who made the latter choice retained (for a time)
the option of emigrating to Britain but they were excluded from
the franchise in Kenya.
(ii) Apartheid. Modern South Africa is governed on the
principle that the state is comprised of several entirely separate
communities, each having its own set of political institutions. The
white community or nation enjoys full rights to representation in a
freely-elected Parliament which has over-all control of the govern-
ment of the Republic. The ten Bantu communities have no repre-
sentation in Parliamen1 but each of them elects its own council to
control local affairs in the territories reserved for Bantu settlement.
The official policy is that in due course each of these will be recog-
nized as a separate nation enjoying full rights of self-government.
The coloured community of Cape Province, who cannot be physi-
cally separated from the white community, used to have the right
to elect four white representatives to the House of Assembly to act
as spokesmen for coloured interests, but this right was abolished
in 1968. In its place the coloured community now has the right
to elect 40 members to the Coloured Persons Representative Coun-
cil, which has some delegated powers of legislation as well as a
consultative and advisory function.
In principle this policy has a certain harsh logic on its side: the
governing white community is unwilling to subjugate itself volun-
tarily to the black majority and it would be optimistic to the point
of unreality to expect a balanced system of multi-racial democracy
to be feasible. In these circumstances it may be argued that the
principle of separate development offers the best hope for political
stability, provided the communities can be geographically separ-
ated. However, critics maintain that in practice separation would
involve an unacceptable amount of human suffering and economic
loss, and if this is the case apartheid will not prove to be a viable
policy, except as a means of keeping the majority of the population
in an inferior position.
(iii) Sex. In a society dominated by men, such as Victorian
England, women were quite naturally excluded from the franchise
on the ground that politics, like business, was the prerogative of
the stronger sex. The same attitude prevails today in a number of
70/Elective Representation and the Franchise
Muslim societies. In Britain the general emancipation of women at
the end of the Victorian era led to the demand for female suffrage,
which was supported in terms of all the main concepts of repre-
sentation. It was said that women needed the vote so that their
elected representatives, acting as spokesmen, could campaign for
an improvement in the legal rights of women in connection with
marriage, divorce and the ownership of property. It was said that
they should be enfranchised in order to elect members of their own
sex and make the House of Commons more nearly a microcosm of
the nation. It was said that their enfranchisement was desirable as
a way of symbolizing their equality with the other sex. It was said,
in terms reminiscent of the Whigs, that enfranchisement would
enlarge the reservoir of talent and experience on which Parliament
could draw. Attacked on four fronts in this way, the opponents of
female suffrage found themselves in a difficult intellectual position,
and when the demand was granted it was probably less because of
the vigour of the Suffragettes' campaign than because it was diffi-
cult for male politicians to muster counter-arguments that carried
conviction.
(iv) Loyalty. It has occasionally been held that certain cate-
gories of citizen who were thought to be fundamentally opposed
to the political system should be deprived of the right to participate
in the working of that system. This view was taken for a period
during the French Revolution and it was the official doctrine of the
Soviet Union from 1917 until 1936. In this period the franchise
was denied to all members of the former ruling classes, defined to
include not only those who had occupied some kind of official
position before the Revolution but also capitalists, rentiers and
clergymen. A further example occurred in Kenya in 1956, when
members of the three tribes who had been associated with the Mau
Mau campaign were excluded from the franchise unless they could
demonstrate that they had aided the administration during the
crisis.

Conclusions
The debate over the franchise began in the second half of
the eighteenth century and continued until the first half of the
twentieth century. It was an essential ingredient in the making of
the modern political world, in which (for the first time in human
 Conclusions/71
history) it has become the normal condition of men both for their
lives to be controlled at every turn by the actions of government
and for them to have some part, however small, in the process by
which their governors are chosen. The debate has produced a new
concept of major importance, described above as the concept of
elective representation, together with a number of other concepts
which have been examined. Having clarified these concepts by
examining them in historical perspective, we shall tum in the
following chapters to a more analytical discussion of the problems
of representative government.
&/Representing
Interests

Much, perhaps most, of the public controversy about repre-

sentative institutions in the nation-state has revolved around the
question of who should be represented in the legislative assembly.
There are, however, problems of conceptual interest about the
slightly different question of what should be, or what is, repre-
sented. Until the second half of the eighteenth century this was
hardly an important question, since it was generally agreed that
the function of political representatives was to defend the material
interests of the propertied groups for whom they spoke, such as
the landowners, the merchants and the clergy. With the extension
of representative government in the past two hundred years the
question has become important, however, and the various answers
to it will be discussed in this chapter and the next under the follow-
ing headings: (a) the representation of personal interests; (b) the
representation of class interests; (c) the representation of sectional
interests; (d) the representation of opinions; and (e) the repre-
sentation of political parties.

The representation of personal interests

As noted earlier, the lead in the campaign for the liberal-
ization of British institutions in the nineteenth century was taken
by the Utilitarians, who believed that the object of the representa-
tive process should be to ensure that the personal interests of the
entire body of citizens were reflected in the House of Commons.
In the Benthamite view of society each man was an isolated indi-
vidual, pursuing a personal road to happiness which only he could
define. It followed that so many thousand electors in a constituency
would have so many thousand personal interests, and it could not
sensibly be expected that an M.P. could act as a delegate for the
interests of his constituents. The Benthamites therefore put their
72
 The representation of personal interests/73
faith in the different view that a properly elected Parliament would
reflect the interests of the citizens as a whole in the way that a
random sample reflects the characteristics of the larger body from
which it is drawn.
It was assumed that there would be disagreements between
representatives and a constant need for compromise. It was not
thought, however, that there would ever be a fundamental conflict
which could not be bridged by compromises. This belief in the
fundamental harmony, or at least fundamental compatibility, of
personal interests in society was not defended very convincingly in
political terms but it seems to have owed a great deal to the analogy
between politics and economics. Political man was seen as essen-
tially the same as economic man, as a rational, calculating, self-
seeking individual trying to maximize his own welfare. The
Utilitarians accepted Adam Smith's theory that economic affairs
in a free market were guided by 'an invisible hand' which so
arranged things that the maximum benefit for all would result
from the interaction of persons seeking only to increase their in-
dividual profits. A free society was regarded as equivalent to a free
market, with the state as neutral in each case, and it was assumed
that the happiness of all would be maximized by the pursuit of
individual satisfactions. In this way the whole problem of what
constitutes the public interest was argued away. That individual
Utilitarian writers were sometimes worried about this is clear from
their anxieties about the ignorance of the masses, the need for
enlightened leadership and so forth, but they were nevertheless
pretty well committed to the rather simple model of society that
has been outlined.
Now, whatever the merits and limitations of Adam Smith's
economic theories, it is clearly inadequate to believe, as a general
rule, in the fundamental compatibility of political interests. There
are many societies where the interests of minorities take a per-
manent second place to the interests of the majority, to the extent
that members of the minority have an understandable feeling of
grievance and political injustice. The most obvious contemporary
examples-each of them different from the others-are the Cath-
olics in Northern Ireland, the Chinese in Indonesia, the Arabs in
Israel, and the Negroes in the United States, but the list could
easily be extended. In societies of this kind, marked by political
74/Representing Interests
incompatibilities of a fundamental nature, the microcosmic theory
of representation clearly breaks down: a representative assemblyof
this desired type would simply mirror the divisions in society and
do nothing to heal them.
One question which emerges is that of how many societies are
marked by fundamental political incompatibilities. According to
the most influential political doctrine of the contemporary world,
all societies other than Communist societies are in this position,
whether or not their leaders realize it. The Marxist view of politics
and representation stands in sharp contrast to the Utilitarian view
and may conveniently be juxtaposed to it.

The representation of class interests

To the Marxist, the most essential fact about societies is
that they are divided into economic classes, each of which is in
conflict with the others. In the Western world of the nineteenth
and twentieth centuries the essential conflict is between the capi-
talist class and the proletariat, each of which is defined in terms
of its relationship to the means of production. The capitalists own
the means of production and thus control the levers of power in
society; the proletariat have no assets but their ability to hire out
their labour. The nature of this relationship means that the workers
are inevitably exploited by the capitalists and this state of affairs
can only be ended by the abolition of private ownership of the
means of production.
Political institutions and relationships were seen by Marx as
largely determined by economic institutions and relationships-
as being part of the superstrUcture of society rather than as part
of the basic strUcture. In a capitalist society the inevitable function
of the state was to preserve the capitalist system, and the govern-
ment could be regarded as a committee for managing the affairs
of the bourgeoisie. Representative institutions in this type of
society could act as a channel of communication and in favourable
circumstances might lead to some amelioration of the workers'
conditions of life, but they could not be expected to bring about
that radical transformation of the economic and social order which
was necessary if the working classes were to be freed from their
position of exploitation. In brief, the capitalist state could not be
 The representation of class interests/75
expected to destroy capitalism. It follows from this that repre-
sentative institutions of a liberal democratic type must be seen as
part of a fa~ade which tends to mask the real nature of class conflict
and to prevent the workers from recognizing that a fundamental
improvement in the condition of their lives can only be brought
about by revolution.
Of course, the Marxist attitude to representative government
cannot be adequately summarized in a few sentences. Marx's
theories were sophisticated; his writings on this particular topic
were somewhat ambiguous; and the Marxist doctrine has been
developed and extended by a number oflater writers. The purpose
of including this sketch is not to explain Marxism but simply to
indicate that Marxists have a model of society which can be con-
trasted with the Utilitarian model on almost every score. The
main points of contrast can be enumerated:

1 (a) In the Utilitarian view society is composed of so

many million individuals, each pursuing his own
goals and promoting his personal interests.
(b) In the Marxist view society is composed of two or
three economic classes, each bound together by the
common interests of its members.
2 (a) The Utilitarian assumes that economic and political
behaviour is governed by the free will of the indi-
viduals participating. Some people seek more
wealth, others prefer more leisure; some people
want to promote poetry and the arts, others are
more interested in gambling; some would like to
see birth control and abortion promoted by the
government, others would like to see them banned;
and none of these preferences can be predicted by
an observer armed with data about age, sex, and
social and economic status.
(b) The Marxist believes in a form of social deter-
minism. The fundamental interests of citizens are
determined by their class position and an under-
standing of this will guide their political actions
in predictable directions. Of course, some people
are not politically conscious while others suffer
76/Representing Interests
from false consciousness of their own position, but
in the long run the light will dawn and people will
take up their appropriate postures.
3 (a) The Utilitarian believes that there are no funda-
mental conflicts in society which would prevent the
maximization of happiness by compromises and
adjustments.
(b) The Marxist believes that non-Communist societies
are riven by fundamental conflict between classes.
4 (a) In the Utilitarian view the state is neutral, though
care has to be taken (by a wide franchise and fre-
quent elections) to ensure that its decisions are not
biased in favour of particular groups.
(b) In the Marxist view the state is inevitably a tool of
the class which controls the means of production.
5 (a) In the Utilitarian view liberal democracy is the
best form of government.
(b) In the Marxist view liberal democracy is a sham.

Despite the clear contrast between these two models, each

of which is internally consistent, practising politicians have often
mixed assumptions from one with beliefs from the other. Thus,
in the second half of the nineteenth century many British Liberals
came to believe in the existence of a degree of class conflict be-
tween the industrial working class and the rest of society, and
consequently to express apprehension about the probable effects
of giving the vote to industrial workers. One such was Robert
Lowe, who warned his colleagues in the following terms: 'While
you are dreaming of equality you are creating the greatest in-
equality, by placing the minority, in which are included the rich
and educated, at the mercy of those who live by daily labour.' 1
Gladstone's reply to this was that they had had two Parliaments
since the 1867 Reform Act and while 'both of them have shown, in
their respective ways, an attention to the interests of labour which
was greatly needed ... neither of them has supplied so much as a
shadow of warrant for the charge that the working men would
combine together, in the interests of their own class, to wage war
upon other classes'. 2
This particular kind of Liberal optimism became impossible
 The representation of class interests/77
after the growth of the Labour Party in the early years of the
present century, since the original aim of the party was to promote
the interests of the working class by securing the election of
working-class members of Parliament. But it must be noted that
the Labour Party, in common with many other Social Democratic
parties, accepts only some of the assumptions of the Marxists. To
some extent (though not entirely) the first three of the Marxist
assumptions listed above are accepted by Labour, but the fourth
and fifth Marxist assumptions are rejected. It is partly because
Social Democrats have never been able to agree upon a consistent
model of society and politics that Social Democratic parties have
been so prone to internal strife about ideological questions.
One of the questions that has repeatedly caused controversy
among Social Democrats is the role of their elected representatives.
On the one hand, Social Democrats are committed to bringing
about social reform by parliamentary means, which means working
within a system in which elected representatives are normally ex-
pected to have a free hand in determining policies which they think
will promote the public interest, unhampered by instructions from
extra-parliamentary bodies. On the other hand, it is natural for a
party whose primary function is to promote the interests of the
working class to feel that its representatives are to some extent
delegates, sent to the parliamentary assembly with a particular
mandate. This is a genuine dilemma which emerges in Britain in
the perennial debate about whether the Parliamentary Labour
Party-the political wing of the Labour Movement-should be
bound by resolutions passed at the Annual Conference of the
Party, where trade-union delegates control three-quarters of the
votes.
Contemporary political scientists have also drawn assumptions
and hypotheses from both the Utilitarian and the Marxist models.
Most research into electoral behaviour has been based on the
belief, expressed implicitly or explicitly, that liberal democracy is
a desirable form of government which tends to make decision
makers responsive to the interests and desires of the voters. At the
same time, many scholars have accepted a form of social deter-
minism when investigating voting behaviour. For example, the
several million working-class people in Britain who vote Con-
servative have frequently been described as 'deviant cases', the
78/Representing Interests
assumption being that workers ought to vote Labour. Some of the
explanations of working-class Conservatism, made by scholars who
are far from being Marxists, have also involved something very
like the Marxist concept of false consciousness: it has been sug-
gested that working-class Conservatives are people whose sub-
jective social status is higher than their objective social status, or
that buying a house on a mortgage has given them a false sense of
identification with the propertied classes. In statistical terms, these
hypotheses (if true) can explain the behaviour of only a small
proportion of working-class Conservatives, and their continuing
attraction for political scientists is something of a mystery.

The representation of sectional interests

Of course, many politicians and writers have a view of
society which is neither Utilitarian nor Marxist. To one such
group, the most important characteristic of a modern society (as
distinct from feudal or peasant societies) is that it is composed of
sections and groups with overlapping memberships. In this view,
a citizen is seen neither as an isolated individual nor as a person
whose condition of life is determined by the class to which he
belongs, but as a bundle of interests and affiliations. He is a
northerner or a southerner, concerned with agriculture or com-
merce or some branch of industry, belonging to a variety of volun-
tary associations, a member of this church or that. This kind of
view has been taken by British writers as diverse as Burke, who
wrote of the 'little battalions' which attracted men's primary
loyalties, Figgis, the author of Churches in the Modern State, and
G. D. H. Cole the Guild Socialist. In America the same sort of
view has been taken by people as different as James Madison, the
fourth president, John C. Calhoun, the Southern politician and
advocate of states' rights, and David Truman the political scientist.
In this view political activity reveals neither a fundamental har-
mony of interests nor a fundamental conflict, but a continuing
series of clashes and compromises.
This pluralist view of society is compatible with more than one
attitude towards the functions and role of political representatives.
There is, for instance, a fairly clear contrast between the views of
Edmund Burke and James Madison. Burke took it for granted that
citizens had a variety of sectional and functional interests which
 The representation of sectional interests/79
they were concerned to defend and promote, and he assumed that
they would often expect their elected representatives to act as their
agents in this regard. However, he made it clear on many occasions,
and particularly in his famous speech to the electors of Bristol
that was quoted in an earlier chapter, that he did not regard this
as the proper function of representatives. In his view the M.P.'s
responsibility to the nation as a whole took priority over his
responsibility to his constituents and his duty was to promote the
national interest rather than to promote sectional interests. He
must take heed of the latter, he must be aware of his constituents'
demands, but in the last resort he must rely on his own judgement
about what ought to be done. Only if M.P .s behaved in this way
could Parliament promote the general good.
The direct implication of this view is that elected representatives
must in some sense be superior persons, capable of rising above
the promotion of their own and their constituents' interests in
order to pursue a higher goal. However, James Madison, writing
in the same period as Burke, took a somewhat more sceptical view
of the behaviour to be expected of politicians. His ideas must be
examined carefully as, in addition to being an immensely successful
statesman, he was probably the most logical and coherent political
theorist America has produced.
Madison's analysis. The starting point of Madison's analysis
was his belief that a conflict of interests in society is inevitable and
will necessarily lead (unless the free expression of opinion is sup-
pressed by a despotic ruler) to the development of factional dis-
putes on political issues.
A landed interest, a manufacturing interest, a mercantile
interest, a moneyed interest, with many lesser interests,
grow up of necessity in civilised nations, and divide them
into different classes, activated by different sentiments and
views. The regulation of these various and interfering
interests forms the principal task of modem legislation, and
involves the spirit of party and faction in the necessary and
ordinary operations of the government. 3
Madison's second proposition on this theme is that elected
representatives will inevitably act to a very considerable extent as
delegates for particular interests.
So/Representing Interests
And what are the different classes of legislators but advo-
cates and parties to the causes which they determine? Is a
law proposed concerning private debts? It is a question to
which the creditors are parties on one side and the debtors
on the other. Justice ought to hold the balance between
them. Yet the parties are, and must be, themselves the
judges; and the most numerous party, or, in other words,
the most powerful faction must be expected to prevaii.4
In a subsequent paragraph, Madison explicitly rejected the
view taken by Burke and his fellow-Whigs:
It is in vain to say that enlightened statesmen will be able
to adjust these clashing interests, and render them all sub-
servient to the public good. Enlightened statesmen will not
always be at the helm. Nor, in many cases, can such an
adjustment be made at all without taking into view indirect
and remote considerations, which will rarely prevail over
the immediate interest which one party may find in dis-
regarding the rights of another or the good of the whole. 5
It is noteworthy that, in rejecting the Burkean view,
Madison did not go over to what was shortly to become the
Benthamite position, that the 'good of the whole' is a meaningless
concept unless defined simply in terms of the addition and sub-
traction of individual interests. Being more of a practical politician
than either of the British writers, Madison was willing to accept
that concepts such as 'the national interest' and 'the rights of men'
had some meaning and reality, even though he might not be able
to define them in terms that would stand up to scholarly analysis.
In Madison's view the realistic alternatives were that repre-
sentatives would either seek to promote the interests of their con-
stituents or use their position to advance their own personal
interests. The former being more desirable, Madison thought it
important that there should be frequent elections to maintain
popular control over their behaviour. This view was in fact shared
by nearly all the Founding Fathers. At the Philadelphia Conven-
tion Madison and his close associate Alexander Hamilton had
thought that a three-year term of office in the House of Repre-
sentatives (as compared with the seven-year term then prevailing
 The representation of sectional interests/81
in the British Parliament) would be short enough, but many other
delegates favoured annual elections and the final decision to fix
the term at two years was a compromise between the two groups.
Defending this position in a newspaper article, either Madison or
Hamilton said it was 'particularly essential that [the House] should
have an immediate dependence on, and an intimate sympathy
with, the people. Frequent elections are unquestionably the only
policy by which this dependence and sympathy can be secured.' 6
Returning to the theme a few days later, the author expressed
the matter as follows:

The House of Representatives is so constituted as to sup-

port in the members an habitual recollection to their
dependence on the people. Before the sentiments impressed
on their minds by the mode of their elevation can be effaced
by the exercise of power, they will be compelled to anticipate
the moment when their power is to cease, when the exer-
cise of it is to be reviewed, and when they must descend to
the level from which they were raised: there for ever to
remain unless a faithful discharge of their trust shall have
established their true title to a renewal of it. 7

It may be noted in passing that this attitude has become

part of the American political tradition and is one of the several
ways in which the American ideas about representative government
differ from European ideas. Frequent elections to the national
legislature have sometimes been proposed in European countries
but (since the end of the French Revolution) never accepted,
largely because it is thought undesirable that the representative
should be too closely tied to the interests and opinions of his
constituents.
The American House of Representatives remains the only
national legislative assembly in the world which is elected bienni-
ally, and the practice has been free from any substantial challenge
until President Johnson proposed in 1966 that the mid-term elec-
tions should be abolished and the congressmen elected for four
years. When this proposal was debated, the two-year term was
defended by arguments almost identical to those used by Madison
and his colleagues. One congressman put it thus:
82/Representing Interests
It is very useful to have to run every two years, because
this compels a legislator to go home, to do what I do, which
is to bend my ear as much as I can and to ring door bells,
to find out what people are thinking about Vietnam, about
the war against poverty. They want to expand it or cut it
back. They have their reasons about the draft, about in-
flation, about economic policy, about a million other things,
and I doubt very much ... that I would be quite as assidu-
ous in going back and making these rounds if I had to run
only once every four years. 8
Returning to Madison, his third proposition was that since
the dominance of one faction (however small or big) over the
others would be undesirable, steps must be taken to avoid this.
The steps which he and his colleagues proposed for America were
three in number and can be summarized as follows:
Ithe establishment of a large unit of government covering
a diverse society
2 the establishment of representative institutions
3 the division of constitutional powers between institu-
tions.
The argument for a large unit of government was part of
Madison's case for the adoption of the new federal constitution.
He maintained (contrary to Rousseau) that a small democratic
city-state would be conducive to injustice, for on most issues the
majority of citizens would be of one mind and the dissenting
minority would find itself dominated and oppressed by this
majority. A large state would be much safer, particularly if it
comprised a variety of sectional interests:
Extend the sphere, and you take in a greater variety of
parties and interests; you make it less probable that a
majority of the whole will have a common motive to invade
the rights of other citizens; or if such a common motive
exists, it will be more difficult for all who feel it to discover
their own strength, and to act in unison with each other. 9
By logical extension, a union of states would be safer than a
single state, for the factions would be more numerous and the like-
lihood of the government being dominated by a cohesive majority
 The representation of sectional interests/83
would be greatly reduced. Here again, Madison was expressing a
viewpoint which is distinctively, indeed uniquely, American. No
other country in world history has had a national political leader
who insisted on the advantages of factional divisions and the
merits of weak government. It is indeed difficult to think of any
other country where such an argument could conceivably be ad-
vanced. The nearest parallel to Madison's argument (and that not
very near) is the now-discredited argument of the Nigerian Minor-
ities Commission that the rights of tribal minorities would prob-
ably be better protected in a federation of three states, each
multi-tribal, than in a federation of many states, each dominated
by a single tribe. 10 Yet-such is the uniqueness of American
society-few would maintain that Madison's views have been
discredited.
Madison's second safeguard was that the government of the
country should be based on what he called 'republican principles'.
By this he meant that power would rest in the hands of repre-
sentatives elected by the people for limited periods. In such a
system decisions would be taken by majority vote and it would be
impossible for a minority to dominate the government.
Madison's third safeguard was the separation of powers between
legislature, executive and judiciary which is such a distinctive
feature of the U.S. Constitution. This was regarded by Madison
as an 'additional precaution' against the possibility that the federal
government might fall under the dominance of any one group. The
division of Congress into two houses was defended in similar
terms:
In republican government, the legislative authority necess-
arily predominates. The remedy for this inconveniency
is to divide the legislature into different branches, and to
render them, by different modes of election and different
principles of action, as little connected with each other as
the nature of their common functions and their common
dependence on society will admit. 11
This sketch of Madison's views about sectional repre-
sentation, brief though it is, will perhaps indicate the eloquence
and vigour with which he justified the principles underlying the
United States Constitution which he and his colleagues had drawn
84/Representing Interests
up at the Philadelphia Convention. The argument was based partly
on a theory of political behaviour and partly on an appreciation
of the political problems that were likely to arise in a country
where factional divisions would have a basis that was largely
(though not entirely) geographical. The solution that Madison and
his colleagues proposed was a system of representative government
that would be deliberately made complex so as to maximize the
opportunities for the representatives of minority interests to pro-
tect these interests against the wishes of a temporary majority. No
minority could be given a power of veto, but each would be given
room to manoeuvre and some guarantee that it would not find
itself in the position of a permanent minority whose interest would
be consistently flouted.
Calhoun's theory. The next writer whose ideas must be
examined was an American politician who accepted Madison's
views about the representation of sectional interests but carried
them one stage further. John C. Calhoun, vice-president from 1824
to 1832 and senator for the state of South Carolina from 1832 to
1850, represented Southern interests in a period when the South
was in danger of becoming a permanent minority and the interests
which its leaders held most dear were being threatened. His
eloquence as a speaker was supplemented by, and to some extent
based on, the coherent theory of political organization which he
set out in his Disquisition on Government.
Calhoun shared Madison's scepticism about what could be
expected of politicians. 'I have seen enough public men,' he wrote,
'to come to the conclusion that there are few indeed whose attach-
ment to self is not stronger than their patriotism.' 12 Like Madison,
he was sceptical about the likelihood of there emerging anything
that could properly be called a national public opinion or common
will. 'Public opinion,' he said, 'is usually nothing more than the
opinion or voice of the strongest interest, or combination of in-
terests ... Public opinion in relation to government and its policy
is as much divided and diversified as are the interests of the com-
munity.'13 To reflect these interests, political representatives
should act as spokesmen for their constituents. Control through
the suffrage, he said, would make 'those elected the true and faith-
ful representatives of those who elected them instead of irrespon-
sible rulers as they would be without it; and thus, by converting it
 The representation of sectional i'nterests/85
into an agency and the rulers into agents, to divest government
of all claims to sovereignty and to retain it unimpaired to the
community.' 14
Where Calhoun went markedly further than Madison was in
proposing that a system of representative government could only
safeguard the rightful interests of minorities if it were based on
what Calhoun called the principle of the 'concurrent majority'.
He outlined this principle in the following comparison of two
methods of taking the sense of a community.
One regards numbers only, and considers the whole com-
munity as a unit, having but one common interest through-
out; and collects the sense of the greater number of the
whole as that of the community. The other, on the con-
trary, regards interests as well as numbers, considering the
community as made up of different and conflicting interests
• • . and takes the sense of each, through its majority or
appropriate organ, and the united sense of all, as the sense
of the entire community. The former of these I shall call
the numerical or absolute majority; and the latter, the con-
current, or constitutional majority. I call it the constitu-
tional majority, because it is an essential element in every
constitutional government.l6
Calhoun took the view that in the United States the most
important conflicts of interests arose out of geographic differences
and he believed that minority interests could be adequately de-
fended only if proper weight were given to the views of the several
states in any decision of the federal government. He asserted that
this principle was to some extent recognized in the Constitution,
on the one hand by the equal representation of each state in the
Senate and on the other by the clause requiring the concurrence
of three-quarters of the states before any amendment could be
made to the Constitution. He believed-and this was the essence
of his message-that it was vital for the good government of the
country that this principle should be so extended by convention
and practice that a numerical majority in the American Congress
would never use its power to pass measures which deprived the
minority of rights which they considered essential to their well-
being.
86/Representing Interests
Calhoun's particular concern, of course, was with the growing
movement in the Northern states to secure the abolition of slavery.
The Southern states' protection against this threat to their way of
life depended on the fact that half the members of the Senate came
from slave states. This equilibrium between South and North had
existed in the early years of the union and had been maintained by
the practice adopted, from 1820 to 1850, of admitting new states
in pairs, one slave and the other free. In 1850 it was proposed to
upset this equilibrium by admitting California as a free state with
the prospect of this being followed, not by the admission of a
further slave state, but by the admission of four more Northern
states. In the last weeks of his life, Calhoun made a prophetic
speech to the Senate in which he warned the nation that this
destruction of the existing political equilibrium, accompanied as it
was by a lack of tolerance in the Northern states toward the insti-
tution of slavery, would inevitably lead the Southern states to feel
that they had no choice but to secede from the union.

The limitations of delegated representation

Calhoun's writings are important not only because of his
place in American history and his logical exposition of a distinctive
point of view, but also because they point to the dilemma of any
political theorist who proposes that elected representatives ought
to act as delegates. If a system of government gives power to elected
persons and those persons act primarily as spokesmen for sectional
interests, it follows as night follows day that that system will only
be able to resolve disagreements so long as the conflicts between the
sections are open to compromise. Madison's optimism about the
political system he advocated was based upon his equation of
political man with economic man and his belief that there were
no fundamental conflicts of interest between groups in a capitalist
society. Calhoun's pessimism about the American system sprang
from his perception that the question of slavery was becoming an
issue on which compromise was impossible.
Now, the evidence of history indicates that Madison's views,
appropriate though they were for his own country in his own time,
were simplistic and over-optimistic as a general prescription for
the operation of representative institutions in the world at large.
 The limitations of delegated representation/87
In the first place, there are numerous examples of non-economic
conflicts of interest which cannot easily be resolved by compromise,
adjustment and a policy of incremental benefits. These include
race relations in the United States, Southern Mrica and elsewhere;
religious conflicts in Northern Ireland; linguistic divisions in
Canada, Belgium and India; tribal conflicts in Nigeria and else-
where. Secondly, there is an increasing tendency for political sys-
tems to be plunged into crisis by ideological conflicts which are
only indirectly related to conflicts of sectional or group interest.
Thirdly, it is by no means clear that Madison's optimism about
capitalist society was justified. True, most capitalist societies in the
West have managed to prevent class divisions becoming the basis
of fundamental conflict, but it is less plausible to believe that this
flows from the nature of capitalist society than to believe that it
results from enlightened leadership by politicians, 'enlightened'
being defined as the pursuit of objectives that have been conceived
in broader terms than the promotion of group interests. It is sug-
gested, in short, that although in point of fact many elected repre-
sentatives may pursue group interests a theory of good government
is bound to be inadequate if it recommends this kind ofbehaviour
as the norm.
This conclusion is reinforced by the difficulties experienced by
those political scientists who have tried to explain political behavi-
our simply in terms of group pressures. A. F. Bentley was the
leader in this enterprise and David Truman is his most distin-
guished follower. Bentley, in a spirited onslaught on A. V. Dicey
and other nineteenth-century scholars, argued that it was a mis-
take to analyse political opinions as if they had an independent
existence when in fact they were no more than a cover for group
interests. The real task of the scholar, he maintained, was to
make a quantitative assessment of group pressures in society.18
Writing over forty years later, Truman tried to follow Bentley's
prescription in respect of the American political system, but to
explain how the equilibrium of the system was maintained he had
to give an account not only of actual pressures for sectional inter-
ests but also of latent or potential pressures for general interests
such as the preservation of civil liberties and the maintenance of
constitutional procedures. To bring considerations of this kind
within his conceptual framework he had to postulate the existence
88/Representing Interests
of 'potential interest groups', whose activities could clearly not be
measured, and in doing this he was really illustrating the inade-
quacy of Bentley's model of the political processY
If politics is more than a matter of balancing group pressures
the elected representative, in so far as he is a policy maker, must
act as rather more than a delegate. This has been generally accepted
in European ideas about representation and at least partially
accepted in American ideas. However, this leaves open a fairly
wide question about how elected representatives ought to behave.
Many of the answers that have been given to this question stress
the representation of opinions, and these will be discussed in the
following chapter.
6/Repr~senting
Op1n1ons

The idea that the function of elected representatives in the

legislative assembly should be to advance opinions, as distinct
from interests, did not become at all prominent until the middle
decades of the nineteenth century. Many of those who acted as
early advocates of this idea took the view that the opinions to be
advanced were the individual opinions of constituents, just as
Bentham and James Mill had believed that representatives should
be concerned with individual interests. This view clearly presents
certain problems, for while a man's interests are easy to recognize
and relatively stable, his opinions tend to be personal, private and
changeable, so that it is more difficult to know how they can be
represented by someone else. Indeed, Jean-Jacques Rousseau took
the view that this would be impossible, which was one of his
reasons for not believing in the virtues of representative govern-
ment. And even if this problem is not taken too seriously, it is
clearly difficult to defend geographical constituencies in terms
of a theory of representation which lays stress on the representation
of personal opinions. It may be plausible (up to a point) to defend
them by saying that the inhabitants of each town or rural com-
munity share certain interests but it is not very plausible to suggest
that they are likely to have common views about such matters of
opinion as censorship, capital punishment or the merits of the
divorce laws.
It was with this problem in mind that Thomas Hare, an English
Liberal writer of the rSsos, put forward his logical but impractical
proposals for a form of proportional representation under which
voters would be able to create their own constituencies. To get a
fair representation of opinions in the House of Commons, he
maintained, it would be necessary to scrap the whole system of
geographical representation in favour of an electoral system in
which the total number of voters would be divided by the total
89
90jRepresenting Opinions
number of seats in order to establish an electoral quota. Candidates
would be able to campaign on a national basis and any candidate
who got the required quota of votes would be duly elected, second
preferences being taken account of where appropriate. In this way
any viewpoint that was supported by the required quota of electors
would acquire a spokesman in Parliament, even though these elec-
tors were so spread about the country that they composed no more
than a tiny minority in any given area. 1 Each elector would know
that his votes had helped to elect a representative, instead of nearly
half the voters being left with the doubtful satisfaction of having
voted against the successful candidate. And each representative
would know that he had his whole 'constituency' behind him: as
J. S. Mill said, 'the tie between the elector and the representative
would be of a strength, and a value, of which at present we have no
experience'. 2
The chief practical objection to this plan is the confusion that
its adoption would create at every election, and no doubt this is
why it has not been taken seriously by practising politicians. A
more theoretical objection is that it would lead to a Parliament in
which the representatives of specialized opinions would be com-
pletely committed to their particular viewpoints but would have an
entirely free hand on all other matters: thus the representative of
the anti-vivisectionists would feel bound to press this cause at
every opportunity but would have no guidance at all as to the
views of his supporters on financial affairs or foreign policy. In
such a Parliament it would be possible for the fate of the govern-
ment's economic policy to depend on the support that could be
elicited from a motley assortment of vegetarians, prohibitionists,
and Christian Scientists.
J. S. Mill, who was the most distinguished supporter of Hare's
scheme, did not look at the matter in quite this way. To Mill, the
great advantage of the scheme was that it would enable the intel-
ligent elite of the country, who would be in a minority in most
geographic constituencies, to band together to secure the election
of men of distinction. As he said:

The only quarter in which to look for a supplement, or

completing corrective, to the instincts of a democratic
majority, is the instructed minority; but, in the ordinary
 Representing Opinions/91
mode of constituting democracy, this minority has no
organ; Mr. Hare's system provides one. 3

This raises the whole question of whether elected repre-

sentatives should reflect such opinions as exist among the popu-
lation, presumably in proportion to their distribution, or whether
the representatives should pay special heed to informed opinions
and should themselves be educated persons capable of leading
opinion. If it is believed that every citizen's opinions are of equal
worth certain conclusions follow, not only about the working of
the representative system but also about the case for popular
referenda on some kinds of issue. If this is not believed, the non-
believer is faced not so much with conclusions as with problems
about the proper operation of representative government.
As a matter of history, it seems fair to say that in the American
political tradition this belief is a dominant strand whereas in the
political tradition of Britain and other European countries it is
only one strand among others. This difference is revealed in the
different tone of political speeches in the two continents. It
emerges in institutional arrangements such as the use of referenda
in some state and many city governments in America, which has
very few parallels in Europe. It is reflected in the readiness of
Americans (but not Europeans) to persevere with laws and policies
which are favoured by the majority even though their consequences
and repercussions are disastrous from the point of view of law
enforcement agencies, examples being prohibition in the 1920s and
the refusal to supply drugs to drug addicts in the r96os. This
difference in attitudes can be variously described, according to
choice, as (a) the difference between a full and a partial commit-
ment to democratic values; (b) the difference between reluctance
and willingness to trust public officials and politicians; or (c) the
difference between an egalitarian society and a society characterized
by habits of deference to leaders and experts.
Apart from the Levellers and Bentham (who was in any case
concerned with interests rather than opinions) it is hard to find
a British political theorist who has accepted the equality of worth
of each man's opinion. For all his radicalism, John Stuart Mill was
certainly unwilling to accept this. In consequence, he spent some
time grappling with the intellectual dilemma that was created by
92/Representing Opinions
his commitment to the following three principles: (i) that Parlia-
ment should reflect the full diversity of opinions held in society;
(ii) that all literate and tax-paying citizens should be enfranchised;
(iii) that, nevertheless, the ignorance of the majority rendered their
judgement unreliable and their opinions of only doubtful validity.
Mill's attempts to deal with this dilemma can be summarized
in four points. First, he hoped that if the electoral system were
reformed, preferably along the lines suggested by Hare, the edu-
cated minority would acquire an influence out of proportion to
its numbers and would be able to ensure the return of a fairly
large number of educated representatives. Secondly, he proposed
that educated persons should be given a built-in advantage by
the system of plural voting described in Chapter 4· As he said
(somewhat optimistically) 'no one but a fool, and only a fool of
a peculiar description, feels offended by the acknowledgement
that there are others whose opinion, and even whose wish, is
entitled to a greater amount of consideration than his'. 4
In the third place, Mill argued that elected persons should not
be expected to act as delegates for their constituents. He put the
matter thus:
Superior powers of mind and profound study are of no
use if they do not sometimes lead a person to different
conclusions from those which are found by ordinary powers
of mind without study: and if it be an object to possess
representatives in any intellectual respect superior to aver-
age electors, it must be counted upon that the representa-
tive will sometimes differ in opinion from the majority of
his constituents, and that when he does, his opinion will
be the oftenest right of the two. It follows that the electors
will not do wisely if they insist on absolute conformity to
their opinions as the condition of his retaining his seat. 5
Fourthly, Mill believed that participation in the political
process would itself be a valuable form of education. Greatly in-
fluenced by de Tocqueville's reports on the working of American
democracy, Mill argued that an extension of the franchise to work-
ing people would result in an 'education of the intelligence and of
the sentiments's of the citizens thus brought into the political
community. Mill had, that is, a dynamic rather than a static view
 The Idealist attitude to representation/93
of the political system. He believed that an extension of the fran-
chise, though it would involve risks in the short run, would lead in
the long run to an improvement in the attitudes and behaviour of
the masses and thus to a beneficial change in the character of the
society.
Impressive though they are, it is doubtful whether Mill's writ-
ings contain a satisfactory answer to the dilemma which he him-
self had posed. It is probably impossible to deal with this dilemma
if the political process is conceived of in such individualistic
terms. If political activity is regarded as the conflict of individual
opinions, in which there can be no automatic guarantee that 'the
truth' will emerge victorious, there may be no alternative but to
put one's faith in the superior rationality of an educated elite and
to take such steps as are politically feasible to rig the system so
that the elite will usually come out on top. But the most con-
vincing of Mill's four arguments is the last one, in which he steps
away from his individualistic assumptions and talks in terms of
a process of social change. It is possible that a more satisfactory
treatment of the dilemmas of representative government in an age
of mass democracy can be obtained by thinking of representation
as a collective process. Two very difficult attempts have been made
to do this: one, indirect and somewhat abstract, by the philo-
sophical Idealists and their followers; the other, arising directly
out of political practice, by the advocates of party discipline and
the idea of the electoral mandate.

The Idealist attitude to representation

The characteristic of the English philosophical Idealists-
of whom F. H. Bradley, T. H. Green and Bernard Bosanquet
may be counted the leaders-that is of most relevance in this con-
text is their rejection of the individualistic assumptions of the
Utilitarians and their followers in favour of a belief in the organic
unity of society.
This belief is more common among continental than among
Anglo-Saxon writers and it has of course a long and distinguished
history. Its political correlate is that on issues which affect society
as a whole there can be found-or, as some would say, there can
be elicited-a common will or opinion which is of higher value
94/Representing Opinions
and greater significance than a mere summation of the individual
opinions and interests of the members of society. In Rousseau's
theory of politics this was to be called the 'general will', was to
be distinguished from the 'will of all', and was to be found by a
special procedure at a meeting attended by all citizens. In Hegel's
philosophy a very similar phenomenon was described as the
'universal will', which would comprise the 'rational wills' of
citizens but was to be distinguished from the 'arbitrary wills'
which individuals might have if they pursued their personal inclin-
ations without regard to the moral values and aspirations of the
society in which they lived. In the works of the English Idealists
the equivalent phenomenon is called the 'common will' or 'com-
mon interest' and is to be elicited by a process of discussion.
None of the Idealists said very much about political repre-
sentation but an attitude towards it is implicit in their view of
society and politics. Their great contribution is their recognition
that there are differing levels of opinion and interest. If so many
million individuals were each to consult his own inclinations and
make his own demands, without reference to the views and wants
of anyone else, the result would not be a country which would be
governed by compromises and adjustments but a country which
could not be governed at all, except by force and the arbitrary
decisions of its rulers. But the Idealists insisted that no society
which deserves the name of society is at all like that. On the con-
trary, it is a community of persons who share certain values and
aspirations which are passed on from one generation to another,
which shape individual aspirations and opinions, and which limit
(though they do not completely determine) the demands which
people think it reasonable to present. If such a society is well
governed it is reasonable to suppose that the state can be based
not on force but on the common will of its citizens. As T. H. Green
asserted, 'will, not force, is the basis of the state'. 7
In this view of politics the purpose of the representative pro-
cess-as of the political process as a whole-is not to encourage
or emphasize a diversity of opinions but to reduce such differences
as exist; not to produce a conflict of interests between sections
but to harmonize interests as far as possible. The political process
is seen as one which aims at the creation of consensus, it being
recognized (at least by the more pragmatic writers of this school)
 The Idealist attitude to representation/95
that this involves political leadership as well as the exchange of
opinions about what should be done by people who are familiar
with the needs and interests of groups within the community.
A. D. Lindsay compared the problem of democratic government
with the problem of finding the sense of the meeting, in which
it should be recognized that everyone had a right to speak but
should not be accepted that everyone had an equal voice or that
taking votes was the best way to proceed. 'The purpose of repre-
sentative government,' he said, 'is to ... make effective discussion
possible ... it is democratic in so far as it is recognised that every-
one, just because they have their own life to lead, has something
special and distinctive to contribute . . . But . . . this belief that
everyone has something to contribute does not mean that what
everyone has to say is of equal value. It assumes that if the dis-
cussion is good enough the proper value of each contribution will
be brought out in the discussion.' 8
This kind of view was quite common among British students
of politics from the turn of the century until the Second World
War. There was a fairly general tendency to reject the individual-
istic assumptions of nineteenth-century Liberals combined with
a readiness to accept the validity of concepts such as the 'common
good', the 'common will', the 'social ethic' and the 'popular mind'.
Thus, in 19II L. T. Hobhouse described liberty as 'primarily a
matter of social interest, as something flowing from the necessities
of continuous advance in those regions of truth and of ethics
which constitute the matters of highest social concern'. 9 In 1928
H. J. Laski declared that 'the underlying thesis of popular govern-
ment is that discussion forms the popular mind and that the
executive utilizes the legislature to translate into statute the will
arrived at by that mind'. 10 In 1942 Sir Ernest Barker said that the
real basis of democracy is the 'discussion of competing ideas,
leading to a compromise in which all the ideas are reconciled and
which can be accepted by all because it bears the imprint of a11'. 11
Similar views were held by politicians in all three parties: by
Liberals such as Asquith, Haldane, and Grey; by a large number
of Conservatives; and by a minority of Socialists. Here, for in-
stance, are two statements by the first Labour Prime Minister,
J. Ramsay MacDonald. First: 'The radical idea of majority rule
is wrong, because it is the general will and not the majority that
96/Representing Opinions
governs. ' 12 Second: 'The actions of legislatures can but express the
will of the community-not of a class, or of a majority, or a minor-
ity, or a party, but of the community.' 13
In the United States philosophical idealism found some expres-
sion in the writings of academics such as Josiah Royce, but they
were less influential than their English counterparts and this mode
of thought never became fashionable. Few students of politics
have adopted it, though two exceptions are worth quoting. One
is George Galloway, who wrote in the following terms:
A true representative of the people would follow the people's
desires and at the same time lead the people in formu-
lating ways of accomplishing those desires. He would lead
the people in the sense of calling to their attention the
difficulties of achieving those aims and the ways to over-
come the difficulties. This means also that, where necess-
ary, he would show special interest groups or even
majorities how ... their desires need to be tempered in the
common interest or for the future good of the nation.14
Another is Walter Lippmann, who said 'living adults
share, we must believe, the same public interest. For them, how-
ever, the public interest is mixed with, and is often at odds with,
their private and special interests. Put this way, we can say, I
suggest, that the public interest may be presumed to be what
men would choose if they saw clearly, thought rationally, acted
disinterestedly and benevolently.' 16 But Lippmann acknowledged
that this kind of behaviour was rare among American politicians
and argued that the American political system, with its emphasis
on frequent elections and popular control, did nothing to encour-
age it.
The normal American reaction to the kind of approach recom-
mended by the Idealists has been well expressed by Charles
Gilbert in the following comment on 'the Idealist tradition':
We tend to distrust its ambiguity about leadership and
responsiveness, to doubt that the same subtle dialogue and
ethical argument are possible in the great society and in
the small group and to emphasize, therefore, the electoral
sanction and the specifics of instrumental representation
 Party representation/97
rather than the diffuseness of expressive representation;
we set more store by substance and procedure than by
style; we suspect that unitary claims often mask sinister
interests. 16

Party representation
It is a remarkable fact that most theoretical writings about
political representation have ignored the existence of organized
parties. This is odd in the United States, where parties play an
important part in the representative process even though party
discipline is very weak; it is extraordinary in Britain, where the
scope for individual action on the part of M.P .s has been drastic-
ally reduced by the development of strict party discipline since
the Reform Act of 1867.
There are of course two reasons for this lacuna in the literature,
one being the fact that the most eloquent and influential theorists
wrote before the development of party discipline, the other being
the fact that theorists have found it difficult to justify party disci-
pline. As we have seen, most theoretical writings about representa-
tion have been concerned either with the proper extent of the
franchise or with the proper behaviour and ideal functions of
elected representatives. And whether one thinks in terms of the
representation of interests or the representation of opinions or
the search for a common will, it is not at first sight easy to justify
a system in which the elected representative may be forced by
his party managers to vote for a policy which is contrary to the
apparent interests of his constituents, contrary to the prevailing
opinion in his constituency, and contrary to his own personal
judgement about what is best for the country.
It is therefore not surprising that around the tum of the cen-
tury, when it had become clear that the growth of party discipline
was changing the nature of the British representative system,
numerous writers of Liberal inclinations drew attention to this
development in tones of regret. Sir Henry Maine took the view
that it would lead to a new form of corruption, in which parties
would bid for votes by appealing to class interests.H Ostrogorski
alleged that the growth of party caucuses would tum parliamentary
leaders into party dictators and upset the whole balance of the
4
98/ Representing Opinions
British political system.18 Sidney Low said that the authority of
the House of Commons was being undermined and 'its own ser-
vants' (by which he meant ministers) 'have become, for some
purposes, its masters'. 1 9
In twentieth-century Britain both Conservative and Labour
parties enforce a fairly rigid form of discipline on their M.P .s,
but only left-wing writers have made any serious attempt to
justify this in terms of a theory of representation. This is the
theory of the electoral mandate, which, in summary, can be re-
duced to the following propositions:
I that mass democracy will give a meaningful influence
to the electors only if they are presented with two or
more alternative programmes of action between which
they can choose, knowing that the party which wins
will do its best to put its programme into effect during
the next Parliament;
2 that a party winning a parliamentary majority at a
general election is not only entitled but obliged to pur-
sue its stated aims, having a mandate from the people
to this effect;
3 that this will not put too much power into the hands
of party managers and leaders if each party is internally
democratic (as the Labour Party is), so that members
will have the opportunity to take part in the process
by which party policies are formulated;
4 that individual M.P .s are therefore obliged to support
their party in Parliament, since they were elected on
a party platform and their individual opinions (unless
they involve matters of conscience) are largely irrel-
evant.
This theory of representation has an obvious logic, provided
its assumptions are correct. A system of representative govern-
ment which conformed to this model would be one in which the
individual representative would be left with relatively little free-
dom of action and in which parliamentary debates would be set
pieces between rival armies, staged for the benefit of the elec-
torate rather than for any influence they might have on the process
of decision making and legislation. But it could be argued that
 Party representation/99
this price would be worth paying for the increase in the respon-
sibility of the government to the electors and the greater meaning-
fulness (as compared with a more individualistic system) of the
votes cast at each general election.
This view has indeed been taken by a number of American
scholars who have criticized the more individualistic system that
their country enjoys and have recommended a move in the direc-
tion of the British system. In 1950 the Committee on Political
Parties of the American Political Science Association declared
that the conditions of an effective party system are, 'first, that the
parties are able to bring forth programmes to which they commit
themselves and, second, that the parties possess sufficient internal
cohesion to carry out these programmes'. 20 In the same report,
this committee advocated intra-party democracy and a system in
which electors would be presented with a meaningful choice be-
tween alternative policies. E. E. Schattscheider, the chairman of
the committee, has developed the same theme in a number of
writings. Fritz Morstein Marx has complained that 'a major short-
coming in the present scheme is the lack of party responsibility'. 21
James M. Bums has said that 'the Madisonian model . . . has
provided flexibility, accountability and representativeness in our
governmental system, at the expense of leadership, vigour, speed,
and effective and comprehensive national action'. 22
We have here, therefore, a model of responsible party govern-
ment to which the British system is said to approximate, which has
been justified by British left-wing writers (though not by Con-
servatives or Liberals), and which some American political scien-
tists would like to see their own country emulate. In point of fact,
however, research into British political behaviour conducted since
1951 indicates that although the British representative system
is characterized by effective party discipline, it does not corre-
spond at all closely to the other features of this model.
For one thing, the parties do not usually present coherent pro-
grammes of action in their election manifestos. They outline their
general objectives, but they rarely commit themselves to more
than two or three specific proposals. Secondly, surveys of the
attitudes and motives of voters suggest that these policy statements
influence the voting behaviour of only a very small proportion
of the electors. People are influenced by traditional loyalties, by
too/Representing Opinions
the general image that each party presents and by the record of
the government of the day, but not to any great extent by election
promises. Thirdly, the record of history shows that election prom-
ises are a poor guide to the actions of the successful party after
it has taken over the government: circumstances change, and
plans usually have to be modified accordingly. For all these
reasons, it would be inaccurate to portray the British system of
government as one in which the electors, by preferring one set
of policies to another, give the successful party a mandate to trans-
late its policies into practice during the ensuing five years. The
theory of the mandate may be perfectly reasonable as a set of
recommendations about what ought to happen, but it is misleading
if taken as a model of existing practice.
The fact that electoral research has revealed the limitations of
the mandate theory in this way means, of course, that it cannot
be used as a justification of current practices in British govern-
ment. And this leaves an odd gap. For, as the present writer
observed in an earlier study, 'while British political practice is
now dominated by the assumption that the Parliamentary parties
will behave a sdisciplined blocks, British political thought still lacks
any justification of party discipline that is generally accepted' .23

Conclusions
In this chapter and the one preceding we have examined
a variety of theories about the functions of political representation
in a liberal-democratic system, no one of which seems entirely
satisfactory. By a process of drastic (and somewhat unfair) over-
simplification, their character can be indicated thus:

I a theory about the representation of personal interests

which involves unduly individualistic assumptions
about the nature of society, unrealistic assumptions
about the composition of a national assembly based on
free election, and over-optimistic assumptions about
the chances of all interests being ultimately compatible;
2 a theory about the inevitability of class conflict which
seems to have been largely invalidated by the evidence
of history, at any rate in advanced industrial societies;
 Conclusionsjxox
3 a theory about the representation of sectional interests
which fails to show how policies reflecting the national
interest can emerge in a divided society;
4 a theory about the representation of personal opinions
which involves a host of practical and intellectual
difficulties;
5 a theory about the function of the representative pro-
cess in eliciting the common will of society which is
somewhat vague and optimistic;
6 a theory justifying party discipline and the idea of the
electoral mandate which involves dubious assumptions
about both the knowledge and behaviour of electors
and the possibility of keeping to long-term plans for
government action.

There are two possible reactions to this state of affairs.

One is to say that the normative theories thrown up during the
controversies of the past two hundred years are no longer relevant,
in view of the increased complexity of modem government and
the increased number of constituents represented by each elected
person. This view has been taken by Heinz Eulau, who says that
'as propositions derived from normative doctrines of representa-
tion have been exposed to empirical scrutiny, their obsolescence
has become evident'. 24 In support of this, he points out that
scholars studying the politics of developing nations very rarely
use the concept of representation as an analytical tool, because
'they do not find our inherited formulations of representation
particularly germane to the real-world problems with which the
new nation builders must deal'. 25 After examining three types of
normative theory, he concludes that 'our contemporary real-life
problems are such that none of the traditional formulations of
representation are relevant to the solution of the representational
problems which the modem polity faces'. 26
This reaction is straightforward and can be summarized in a few
lines. The other reaction is more involved and will require a longer
explanation. Its starting point is the view that it is only to be
expected that objections can be found to each normative theory
about representation, for it is the nature of political theories to be
partial and one-sided-to stress one concept and elaborate a
I02/Representing Opinions
justification for one view of how the political process ought to
work. The writer who tries to take account of all aspects of the
problem under consideration will end up with a textbook, not with
a contribution to political thought. In practice the working politi-
cal systems of both Britain and the United States (as well as many
other countries) manage to accommodate differing objectives which
may appear to be incompatible when set out in the language of
political theory, for political systems are complex and flexible.
Some insight into this complexity and flexibility may be gained
by considering the ways in which the representation of group
interests is combined with the representation of opinions and
parties in the British and American political systems. In both
countries, group interests have spokesmen in the national legis-
lature and feed these spokesmen with specialized information for
use in debate and in committee work. A few groups draft legis-
lation for their spokesmen to present, while many persuade their
spokesmen to move amendments to bills sponsored by the execu-
tive. In Britain it is thought perfectly proper for M.P .s acting in
this way to be paid fees or salaries by the groups while in the
United States payments of this kind to congressmen are illegal,
but there are ways of getting round this law. This form of group
representation is utilized in respect of opinions as well as interests,
particularly in Britain, where conservation groups, civil rights
groups, animal welfare groups and others all have active parlia-
mentary supporters.
As well as working through Parliament and Congress, pressure
groups (whether for interests or opinions) work through the politi-
cal parties by a variety of means, including campaigns at party
conferences and conventions, the formation of ginger groups, and
vast contributions to party funds. The strength of party disci-
pline in Britain does not inhibit this process but acts as a spur
to it, as in a system where a party decision binds all the party's
representatives it is all the more important for groups to influence
discussions in the party before the decision is taken. On the other
hand, group pressures within a party will not be successful unless
they can be convincingly portrayed as compatible with the basic
ideology and aims of the party, and this need forces the groups
concerned to think in terms of a view of the national interest as
well as in terms of their own particular interests.
 Concluslons/103
There is a third channel for the promotion of group interests
which is now the most important of all. In the twentieth century
the massive extension of government activities in both countries
has led to the development of direct consultations between inter-
est groups and administrative agencies. Each side needs the other,
the groups needing the opportunity to influence the officials and
the agencies needing both the specialized knowledge that the
groups possess and (in many cases) the support that the groups
can promise. This practice has become an accepted part of the
political process in both countries, as was recognized in Britain
as long ago as 1918, when the Haldane Committee on the Mach-
inery of Government reported in the following terms:
The preservation of the full responsibility of Ministers for
executive action will not, in our opinion, ensure that the
cause of administration will secure and retain public con-
fidence, unless it is recognised as an obligation upon
departments to avail themselves of the advice and assist-
ance of advisory bodies so constituted as to make available
the knowledge and experience of all sections of the com-
munity affected by the activities of the department. 27
The development of this system of consultation has led to
the emergence of new conventions about representation. Each
government department and agency has criteria for determining
whether the interest represented by a group is (in British termin-
ology) 'an affected interest', with a legitimate right to be consulted.
Some large and important groups are excluded by these criteria:
thus the Ministry of Defence does not consult the Campaign for
Nuclear Disarmament about defence policy. Some groups are
excluded for a time but then win the right to be consulted, as the
National Union of Students has won the right to be consulted
about some aspects of the government's policy towards British
universities. If an affected interest is represented by two or three
rival groups, the department has to decide whether they should
be given equal rights and whether they should be consulted jointly
or separately. If an affected interest has no organized group to
represent it, the government may take steps to encourage the
emergence of such a group. In some circumstances the govern-
ment may intervene to the extent of creating a group, the clearest
I 04/Representing Opinions
example in Britain being the Cotton Board, an independent
organization created by statute to which all firms engaged in the
cotton industry are compelled by law to subscribe. A slightly
different example is the University Grants Committee, a body
composed of academics which was created by the government to
carry out the invidious task of deciding how the public funds
made available for the universities should be divided between
them. Developments of a similar kind have taken place in the
United States, where scholars have drawn attention to the
phenomenon of 'clientalism', whereby government agencies be-
come partially dependent on their client groups for mobilizing
public support for agency policies and the continuance of a high
level of appropriations for the agency's expenses.
These examples illustrate the complexity of representative sys-
tems in their actual operation. In practice it is rarely a question
of whether a system serves this function or that, because in most
cases it serves both. Nor are groups or individuals presented with
an 'either-or' problem if they want to exert influence, for a variety
of channels are open to them. As an example, consider the position
of a British teacher who supports the Labour Party and has strong
opinions about vivisection and the abortion laws. As an elector
he will be represented by his constituency M.P., whether or not
this M.P. belongs to the Labour Party. As a party member he will
regard Labour leaders, and perhaps all Labour M.P .s, as being
in a rather different sense his representatives. As a holder of
particular opinions he will feel himself represented by the Anti-
Vivisection Society, the Abortion Law Reform Society, and those
politicians (of whatever party) who act as spokesmen for these
groups. As a teacher he will have interests that are represented
by the National Union of Teachers, which will be engaged in
constant negotiations and consultations with the Department of
Education and the local education authorities; will probably be
trying to persuade one of the political parties to embrace N.U.T.
policies in its next election manifesto; and will certainly be paying
fees to a number of M.P .s who customarily speak on educational
matters in Parliament.
In the British political system this imaginary teacher is thus
represented in four or five different ways. These different types
of political representation reinforce one another and interact to
 Conclusions/IOS
comprise the representation system as a whole. However, it is
necessary to separate them out for the purposes of justification
(by normative theories), investigation (by empirical research),
and illustration (by the construction of models). The process of
separation produces a number of concepts of representation, each
of which relates to one aspect of practice and each of which is
of only limited validity. There is no intellectual process which will
enable these concepts to be combined into one super-concept
which can be called 'the true nature of representation', for this does
not exist as an abstraction and can be found only in the complexity
of the living historical process. But an analysis of the concepts is
a necessary step towards an understanding of this historical pro-
cess, not only for purposes of clarification but also because the
concepts, once enunciated, feed back into the process by shaping
the expectations of participants about the roles which they and
their fellow-politicians should play.
In this view of the relations between political theory and prac-
tice the traditional theories of representation are by no means
irrelevant to modem practice, for they have not only helped to
determine the nature of that practice but they have also provided
the language in which we understand it. Nevertheless, it is clear
that the traditional theories are somewhat limited in nature, having
nearly all been developed during a particular era of world history
(from about 1770 to 1900) which we can now look back on as 'the
age of liberalization'. To overcome these limitations it is necessary
to look at the functions of political representation in a broader
perspective, which will be attempted in the next chapter.
7/The Functions
of Representation

Normative theories of representation have nearly all been

formulated to serve practical purposes, such as the justification
of existing institutions or the promotion of political reforms. Most
of the theories so far discussed emerged out of the debates on the
American and French revolutions and the protracted discussions
on the reform of Parliament and the extension of the franchise in
Britain. The main political developments of the twentieth century
-the growth of party discipline, the extension of government
activities, the rise of one-party states and totalitarian systems, the
emergence of the new states of the third world, the spread of
violence-have given rise to a variety of theoretical writings but
not to new theories of representation, with the one exception of
the theory of responsible party government considered in the
previous chapter. Because of this, the functions of political repre-
sentation are normally discussed in a language which is slightly
dated in character and tends to reflect the values of nineteenth-
century liberalism. To overcome these limitations it is necessary
for the student to disengage himself from the assumptions of
liberal democracy and consider the issues in a broader perspective
and a more analytical manner.
One scholar who has done this is David Apter, who has at-
tempted to construct a theory of representation which is applicable
equally to democratic and non-democratic systems, operating in
societies at all stages of economic and political development. In
Apter's formulation, the functions of political representation are
defined as follows:

I Central control: the ordered maintenance of discipline

in a political system on a day-to-day basis.
2 Goal specification: the identification and priority rank-
ing of policies; hence, a sharing in policy formulation
on the basis of a longer term.
106
 The Functions of Representationji07
3 Institutional coherence: the continuous review, reformu-
lation, and adaptation of the fit between boundaries
of sub-systems, including the regulation of overlapping
jurisdictions, and including as well, ideological adjust-
menU
Unfortunately, these definitions are so wide in scope that
they do not distinguish between the functions of representation
and the functions of other elements in the political process. Central
control, as defined here, is either a function of government as
a whole or the function of a government's law-enforcement
agencies: the business of public officials and policemen rather
than of representatives. Goal specification is a function of all those
concerned with policy making, whether or not they are repre-
sentatives. Institutional coherence is one of the goals of policy
makers, whoever they are. The definitions might apply to the role
of the Communist Party in Russia or China, or a mobilizing party
in a new state like Nkrumah's party in Ghana, but they cannot
serve to distinguish the functions of representative processes from
other processes in all kinds of political system.
Given that political representation fulfils a variety of functions,
it is suggested that a two-stage classification may be helpful, in
which three broadly-defined general functions are sub-divided
into a larger number of specific functions, it being accepted that
not all representative systems fulfil all the functions that they
might fulfil. The general functions may be defined as follows:
1 Popular control: to provide for a degree of popular con-
trol over the government.
2 Leadership: to provide for leadership and responsibility
in decision making.
3 System maintenance: to contribute towards the main-
tenance and smooth running of the political system by
enlisting the support of citizens.
The specific functions may be defined as follows:
I (a) Responsiveness: to ensure that decision makers are
responsive to the interest and opinions of the public.
(b) Accountability: to provide a way ofholding political
leaders publicly accountable for their actions.
I08/The Functions of Representation
(c) Peaceful change: to provide a mechanism for re-
placing one set of leaders by another without
violence.
2 (a) Leadership: to provide for the recruitment of politi-
cal leaders and the mobilization of support for
them.
(b) Responsibility: to encourage political leaders to pur-
sue long-term national interests as well as reacting
to immediate pressures.
3 (a) Legitimation: to endow the government with a
particular kind of legitimacy.
(b) Consent: to provide channels of communication
through which the government can mobilize con-
sent to particular policies.
(c) Relief of pressure: to provide a safety valve through
which aggrieved citizens can blow off steam and
to disarm potential revolutionaries by engaging
them in constitutional forms of activity.

It is suggested that a fully developed representative system

will perform all of these functions, though the precise methods
will vary from one system to another. Of course, most countries
have representative systems which are only partially developed.
For instance, the representative system of the u.s.s.R. provides
effectively for leadership, responsibility, legitimation and consent,
but it is not very effective in the other four functions. Even
systems which may be described as fully representative vary in
their relative strengths. Thus, most observers would agree that
the representative system of the Fourth Republic was more effec-
tive than that of the Fifth Republic in providing for responsive-
ness and peaceful change, but less effective in providing for
leadership, responsibility and consent. It would in principle be
possible to construct a profile for each representative system illus-
trating the way in which it fulfils these eight functions, though
the extreme difficulty of measuring performance along these
dimensions means that this would inevitably have to be based
more on historical judgement than on quantitative research.
It will now be appropriate to consider the nature of these eight
functions of political representation a little more fully.
 Popular control/109

Popular control
The main aim of liberal reformers in the past two centuries
has been to use or to establish representative institutions in order
to extend popular control over the actions of legislators and ad-
ministrators. The achievement of a reasonable degree of control
of this type is generally regarded as the essence of liberal democ-
racy. As Mayo puts it: 'a political system is democratic to the
extent that the decision-makers are under effective popular con-
trol'.2 As we have seen in earlier chapters, much of the debate has
turned on what Wahlke and Eulau have called the focus of
representation: 3 to be specific, on the question of whether the
need is to represent opinions or interests, individuals or groups,
localities or the whole nation. But two other issues cut across the
debate and must be taken account of in any theory of representa-
tion. One is the question of whether representatives are (or should
be) concerned with the felt wants or the real needs of their con-
stituents. The other is whether the control is (or should be)
exercised before the event, by pressures and instructions, or after
the event, by a system of public accountability.
The question of felt wants versus real needs has haunted politi-
cal discussion ever since Rousseau distinguished between the
particular will and the real will of citizens. Some democratic
theorists of a Benthamite disposition have taken the view that
actual, observable wishes and interests alone have reality, feeling
that talk of a real will, like talk of a national interest, serves mainly
to justify the tendency of political elites to impose their view of
what is desirable on the whole country. But experience suggests
that this view is too simple to be adequate.
In the first place, it has been shown time and time again that
there is a wide range of political questions on which the majority
of people have no settled views. To be sure, doorstep interviews
can sometimes elicit a reaction from people who had no clear view
before the interview was conducted, but such reactions do not
survive the test of detailed probing by supplementary questions.
Secondly, people's immediate wishes are often inconsistent. To
take only the most obvious example, most people would vote for
reduced taxes and increased government expenditures, which
would add up to a budgetary deficit, but would vote against the
no/The Functions of Representation
inflation that this would cause. Representatives who felt them-
selves bound to promote only the immediate wishes of their con-
stituents would find that on some issues they had guidance from
only a minority, on others they had guidance that was clearly in-
consistent, and on others again they had conflicting demands from
different sections of the constituency. If political representation
were solely of this kind the ineffectiveness of the representatives
would probably mean that administrators and other non-
representative persons would play a dominant role in the process
of policy formation.
In fact most representatives do not feel themselves bound in
this way. Thus, at the time of writing (1970) most British M.P.s
are supporting the government's application to join the Common
Market, in spite of the fact that opinion polls show a majority
against the move, because the M.P .s believe that in the long run
membership will benefit the nation. Equally, M.P.s supported the
move to decimalize the currency not because this was wanted by
the public but because it was thought that when people got used
to it they would prefer it to the system of pounds, shillings and
pence. Even on those fairly rare occasions when M.P.s have a free
vote on legislative proposals they do not necessarily feel bound to
follow the expressed wishes of their constituents. Thus, capital
punishment was abolished on a free vote when the polls showed a
majority in favour of retention, the M.P.s acting partly on the
belief that they had a duty to exercise moral and political leader-
ship on this issue and partly on the belief that abolition would
show that public fears about the loss of a deterrent to murder
were unfounded. It was widely believed that ifonly the public had a
better understanding of the psychology of murderers the public
would be in favour of abolition, so that M.P .s who supported the
reform could be said to be acting in accordance with the 'real will' of
the people; i.e. with what the people would want if only they were
better informed and could free themselves of irrelevant prejudices.
In spite of the somewhat different political traditions of the
United States, many American legislators also feel free to act on
their own judgement of what is best for the people they represent.
In their study of the role perceptions of representatives in four
state legislatures, John Wahlke and his colleagues classified their
respondents as delegates if they believed they should follow the
 Popular control/III
expressed wishes of their constituents, as trustees if they believed
they should act on their own judgement, and as 'politicos' if their
views contained a mixture of these beliefs. In seven of the eight
legislative chambers a clear majority of those interviewed were
classified as trustees. 4 In the justifications offered for this attitude,
one common theme was the ignorance of the average voter. As
one representative put it: 'People are not capable to tell me what
to do-not because they are stupid, but because they have limited
access to the facts. If they had the facts, their decision would be
the same.' 6
It is therefore arguable that the idea of responsiveness to public
opinions and interests should be extended to include something
wider than responsiveness to the day-by-day expressions of public
attitudes. It is difficult to find a satisfactory term by which to
describe this, as the concept of a 'real will' has philosophical con-
notations to which many people object. Roland Pennock has
attempted to deal with the problem by distinguishing between
people's desires and people's interests.
The distinction I am intending to make between 'desire'
and 'interest' is the distinction between what is immedi-
ately demanded and what in the long run, with the benefit
of hindsight, would have been preferred or would have
contributed to the development of the individual into a
person capable of making responsible decisions. 6
The distinction is well drawn but it is doubtful whether the
suggested terminology is helpful, because there are immediate
and long-run interests just as there are immediate and long-run
desires. Thus, a firm which applied for a bank loan to finance a
new development would have an immediate interest in a favour-
able reply, but if the projected development were commercially
unsound the long-term interests of the firm would be better pro-
tected by a refusal on the part of the bank.
However, the problem here is only a problem of terminology
and does not reflect any basic confusion. The distinction can be
expressed quite clearly in a paragraph, but there is no single word
which can be used to denote it without ambiguity. If political
science were a different kind of subject a new term or mathe-
matical symbol could be coined for the purpose, but as things are
u2jThe Functions of Representation
the best course is simply to spell out the distinction in ordinary
language. Almost everyone would agree that policy makers have a
duty to take account of enlightened opinions and long-term inter-
ests as well as to respond to the immediate demands that are put
to them. Some say that the concept of responsiveness should be
stretched to include both kinds of response while others would
say that the concept of responsiveness should relate only to ex-
pressed demands and opinions and the wider function should be
considered under another heading, which is best called respon-
sibility. From the point of view of empirical research the second
alternative is certainly preferable, for expressed demands can be
observed and perhaps measured while long-term interests can
only be assessed and may always be a matter of controversy.
For clarity in research design and analysis it is therefore desirable
to keep to a narrow definition of responsiveness, but without fall-
ing into the trap of assuming that this is necessarily more impor-
tant than the other functions of representation.
The other question about popular control that must be men-
tioned is the question of when and how it is to be exercised. On
this question people fall into three main groups. One group
believes that the essence of popular control is control exercised
in advance, by pressures or instructions or party programmes.
Interest groups which appoint representatives to act as spokesmen
clearly fall into this category. So do delegates to the Annual Con-
ference of the Labour Party who regularly demand that confer-
ence decisions should be accepted as binding by the party's leaders
in Parliament. Those American legislators who see themselves as
delegates for their districts regard it as a necessary part of the
democratic process that representatives should do their best to
find out what their voters want and then do their best to achieve
these aims. In the days when u.s. senators were appointed by
state legislatures it was quite common and considered quite proper
for the senators to be given instructions on the line they should
take. All politicians and writers who subscribe to the doctrine of
the electoral mandate believe that the party programme, once
endorsed by the electorate, should provide instructions and terms
of reference for the incoming government.
Now, there can be no doubt that some kinds of representation
lend themselves to control in advance. This is the case with all
 Popular control/II3
representatives who are appointed to act as agents, such as am-
bassadors and attorneys and spokesmen for pressure groups. The
modem practice of consulting affected groups before drafting
legislation means that there is ample opportunity for interested
parties to instruct their representatives as to the line they should
adopt.
However, elected representatives in a national legislature can-
not normally be controlled in advance by their electors, for all
the reasons given earlier. The only effective sanction on their
behaviour, it is commonly argued, is that they face the risk of
losing the next election if their decisions prove to be unpopular.
On this argument the essence of popular control (and therefore
the essence of democracy) is that legislators and ministers are
accountable to the public for what they do while in office. The
nature of this accountability clearly varies according to the nature
of the party system. In a system characterized by loose discipline,
such as the American system, elected persons may be held to
account for their individual behaviour by published analyses of
their voting records in Congress or a state assembly. In a disci-
plined party system with only two main parties, such as the
British system, it is the government of the day which is held to
account for its behaviour, with individual M.P.s having to accept
the consequent loss or gain of popularity largely irrespective of
their personal attitudes and behaviour. In a partially disciplined
party system with several main parties, such as that of the Fourth
Republic, the line of accountability is far from clear.
It has sometimes been argued that even this theory of popular
control assumes too much. According to Joseph Schumpeter,
defenders of liberal democracy should abandon the claim that the
public is able to control or even to influence the actions of govern-
ment and should fall back on the more modest and realistic claim
that the system of competitive elections enables the public to
choose between rival teams of political leaders. In Schumpeter's
definition, the democratic method 'is that institutional arrange-
ment for arriving at political decisions in which individuals acquire
the power to decide by means of a competitive struggle for the
people's vote'. 7
One of Schumpeter's arguments is that democratic and repre-
sentative systems of government can be distinguished more clearly
II4/The Functions of Representation
from other systems in terms of processes than in terms of achieve-
ments. There are historical examples, he says, of dictatorial
systems that served the will of the people better than some
democratic systems have done. Certainly there have been dictators
who claimed to be representatives: thus Adolf Hitler once de-
clared, 'My pride is that I know no statesman in the world who
with greater right than I can say that he is the representative of
his people.' 8 Schumpeter put forward six other arguments, all of
which are impressive, though as he was concerned with the
definition of democracy rather than with the functions of repre-
sentation there is no need to discuss them here. There can be no
doubt that it is right to emphasize that the provision of institu-
tional arrangements for competition between politicians, including
the peaceful replacement of one set of leaders by another, is an
important function that a system of political representation can
serve. If we were concerned with the definition of liberal democ-
racy it might be appropriate to say that no representative system
could rightly be called democratic unless it fulfilled this function.
But there have been and are many political systems which are in
some degree representative although they do not provide for
electoral competition, and in a book on the concept of representa-
tion it is sufficient to say that this is one of the eight functions
that representation can serve.

Leadership and responsibility

One of the many ways in which political activity differs
from economic or social activity is that politics involves a sharp
distinction between leaders and led. There are differences of
power and status in economic and social activity, but almost
everyone in society takes part and the personal influence that any
one man or handful of men can have on the system is fairly small.
Politics, on the other hand, is an activity which only a tiny
minority of the population engages in on a full-time basis. All
systems of government are in this sense oligarchic and a handful
of political leaders can exercise immense power over their country.
The selection of political leaders is a process of the utmost im-
portance and it is a process which in many countries is performed
by the representative system.
 Leadership and responsibility/us
This is not the case in traditional systems of government where
leaders are drawn from a ruling family or caste. Nor is it the case
in military dictatorships where leaders are selected by the processes
of military recruitment and promotion: which officer gets the top
position in government depends on a mixture of political ambition,
agility and good fortune, but there is normally a fairly small pool
of senior officers from whom he emerges. But in virtually all other
types of government, democratic or dictatorial, in industrialized
or developing societies, politicians are normally recruited and
political leaders selected through the party system. Parties interest
people in politics, persuade them to accept minor offices, choose
between candidates for election, groom potential leaders for star-
dom, and mobilize support for them when they are successful.
In parliamentary systems the representative assembly plays an
important part in the process because an ability to perform well
in debates is a necessary requisite for ministers. In Communist
systems the assembly is relatively unimportant and top leaders
are normally selected from the membership of the central com-
mittee of the party. The American system is exceptional in that
cabinet posts sometimes go to presidential nominees who have
never held elective office or been active in party affairs, but these
are temporary posts and all career politicians have to make their
way up through the party system.
If one of the functions of a representative system is the selec-
tion of political leaders, another is that of giving them sufficient
support and scope for them to be able to balance conflicting press-
ures and formulate long-term plans for their government. With
elections every four or five years the horizons of politicians are
inevitably limited and 'medium-term' might be a more realistic
expression than 'long-term', but at least it is generally thought
desirable that political leaders should accept a broader respon-
sibility than that of responding to day-to-day pressures.
One facet of this is that it is a function of political representa-
tion not only to articulate popular demands but also to provide
for their integration. As V. 0. Key said: 'The problem of the
politician or the statesman in a democracy is to maintain a working
balance between the demands of competing interests and values.
His task is not necessarily the expression of the "general will"
or the "popular will".'o
n6/The Functions of Representation
Heinz Eulau struck a similar chord when he claimed that hetero-
geneous electoral districts were functional from the point of view of
the political system as a whole: 'The very circumstance ofhetero-
geneity in the district tends to free the representative from being
readily bound by a mandate, to make for discretion and political re-
sponsibility, and to enable him to integrate conflicting demands.' 10
Another facet of the matter is the need for political leaders
sometimes to take decisions which are downright unpopular. No-
body wants conscription, higher taxes, credit restrictions or de-
valuation, but from time to time the national interest requires
such measures. The Conservative leader Lord Hailsham put this
very blundy in his speech defending the rather severe budget of
1962: 'When a government has to choose between a run on the
pound and its own popularity, it has only one choice it can make.
It makes it unwillingly. It must face unpopularity, loss of by-
elections and even, if need be, defeat at a later general election.
This is the price of responsible government. ' 11
Walter Lippmann referred to the same need when he said:
'Governments are unable to cope with reality when elected assem-
blies and mass opinions become decisive in the state, when there
are no statesmen to resist the inclinations of voters and there are
only politicians to excite and to exploit them.'1 2
A third facet of the matter is that there occasionally arises the
need for governments to undertake a major reversal of policy.
The outstanding examples of recent years are President de
Gaulle's decision to accept the demand of the Algerian Liberation
Front for national independence and President Nixon's decision
to engage in a gradual withdrawal of u.s. troops from Vietnam.
To carry through policy changes of this scale requires both powers
of leadership and room for manoeuvre.
It follows that the function of responsibility has certain insti-
tutional implications. If responsiveness were the main function
of a representative system it would be appropriate to have fre-
quent elections and probably a rapid turnover of politicians. The
function of public accountability implies that the turnover should
not be too rapid, for unless representatives believe they have a
fairly good chance of being re-elected the prospect of an election
will not act as a check on their behaviour. The function of respon-
sibility implies that elections should not be too frequent, for
 System maintenancej117
leaders need time both to carry through difficult policies and to
persuade their followers that their less popular measures were
justified.
This discussion of responsibility also emphasizes the value, in
a modem state, of there being several levels of representation.
One of the conditions of achieving both responsiveness and
responsibility in government is that the raw demands made by
local representatives and the spokesmen for particular interests
should be transmuted by discussions within the representative
system into more moderate demands which are more consonant
with each other and with the interests of the nation as a whole.
In this way the representative system acts not only as a set of
information channels but also as a filter.

System maintenance
Rousseau opened the third chapter of The Social Contract
with the following observation: 'The strongest is never strong
enough to be always the master unless he transforms strength
into right and obedience into duty.' He added that force itself
does not create right and that 'we are obliged to obey only legiti-
mate powers'. 13 The wisdom of these remarks has been confirmed
time and time again, and a study of history reveals only a limited
number of ways in which rulers have been able to acquire an
aura of legitimacy. For many centuries in many societies heredity
was the chief source of legitimacy: kings were chosen from a
ruling family and it was important to be able to show an unbroken
line of descent from one generation to another. In some societies
it has been believed that members of a particular caste or class
had an exclusive right to govern: mandarins in China, brahmins
in India, the nobility in feudal Europe, the landed gentry in
eighteenth-century England. In other countries, and more recently,
a particular kind of training has been regarded as a qualification
to govern. In military dictatorships a military training is said to
confer a sense of discipline, honesty and capacity to rise above
sectional interests that is lacking among civilians. In Communist
countries membership of the Communist Party, with the training
and understanding that goes with it, is regarded as a necessary
qualification to take a leading part in administration.
I IS/The Functions of Representation
In the present era of history, however, election by popular vote
is the source of legitimacy that appears to command the most
widespread respect. The party that wins a majority of seats in a
parliamentary election is thereby given authority to govern the
country for a stated number of years. In Britain even the opponents
of the policy mandate theory would agree that an election victory
confers a 'mandate to govern'. This mandate, which implies no
more and no less than a right to govern the country in whatever
way the leaders of the majority party think proper, is however
conditional upon the maintenance of the rules of the game regard-
ing the electoral system. In the Second World War the parties
formed a coalition government and agreed to put off the general
election that was due in 1940 until Germany was defeated, and in
1945 the prime minister asked his parliamentary colleagues to
extend this electoral truce until the war with Japan was also con-
cluded. However, the Labour leaders proved unwilling to accept
this proposal and without their agreement Churchill felt he
had no option but to plunge at short notice into a general
election.
In the United States not even a total war is allowed to interfere
with the practice of holding national elections every other year,
and the American insistence that political authority should be
wielded by persons who can be seen to be the people's repre-
sentatives leads to the practice of electing judges, district attorneys
and other officials whose European equivalents are appointed by
the executive. In the Soviet Union the Stalin Constitution of 1936
established direct popular election to a considerable hierarchy of
legislative bodies, with the Supreme Soviet at the top. In practice
the elections are non-competitive, but great importance is attached
to a large tum-out and it is clearly believed that these representa-
tive institutions, even without competition, bolster the legitimacy
of the government.
The other side of the coin is that a mass boycott of elections
constitutes a public refusal to re-authorize the regime which is
almost certain to endanger it. A good example is the partial boy-
cott of the Nigerian federal elections in 1964: this was successful
in only 70 constituencies out of 312, but it nevertheless caused a
major constitutional crisis and spelled the beginning of the end
of Nigeria's experiment with representative government.
 System maintenance/119
The legitimizing function of representation can also be seen
where representatives are appointed rather than elected. A com-
mission of enquiry into industrial relations would lack legitimacy
in the eyes of industrial workers unless it included at least one
trade unionist among its members. The microcosmic repre-
sentation of the various sections of the federation in the Canadian
cabinet and Supreme Court helps to bolster the legitimacy of the
federal government, while the customary inclusion of a Catholic
and a Jew (and now a Negro) among the nine members of
the American Supreme Court does the same for that
institution.
A related function of representation is the mobilization of con-
sent. This was the original purpose of the older European parlia-
ments, and though it would not now be said to be their main
purpose it continues to be one of their more important functions.
The liberal model of parliamentary government suggests that the
electors control the representatives and the latter control the
administrators, but on many issues the influence actually flows
in the reverse direction. Problems are identified and policies
framed within the administrative departments; ministers explain
the proposals to their colleagues on the back benches; and the
latter whip up support for the proposals by speeches in Parliament
and in the country. The separation of powers prevents the process
working so smoothly in the United States, which is one reason
why the president has to use press conferences and public re-
lations techniques to gain support for his policies, but there are
many occasions on which speeches and campaigns by members
of Congress help to persuade public opinion of the need for
foreign aid, military intervention, increased taxes and other
policies for which there is no spontaneous demand from the
ordinary citizen.
The practice of official consultation with spokesmen for interest
groups serves the same function. This is, of course, not really
the intention of the interest groups, but if their negotiations with
the administration are successful they are inevitably drawn into
the position of agreeing (explicitly or implicitly) to persuade their
members that the compromises they have arrived at are satis-
factory. The general rule is that all channels of political com-
munication tend to become two-way channels.
12ojThe Functions of Representation

This rule can be seen very clearly in the operation of advisory

and consultative committees. Thus, several of Britain's national-
ized industries have consultative committees which were set up
with the explicit purpose of representing consumers and bringing
their complaints to the attention of the public corporations run-
ning the industries. In practice, close contact between the com-
mittees and the corporation officials has generally had the effect
of persuading the committees that most public complaints are
unjustified, and these numerous consumers' committees have on
the whole been more successful in bringing the excuses and policies
of the corporations to the attention of the public than in bringing
public pressure to bear on the corporations. In 1970 public criti-
cisms of the quality of British radio and television services led to
the suggestion that a new Broadcasting Council should be estab-
lished to oversee all the broadcasting media and deal with com-
plaints from aggrieved members of the public. The Daily Tele-
graph made the following comment:
Alas, this suggestion will not begin to solve the problem.
It is our experience generally that boards which are set up
to regulate and supervise some activity, whether on behalf
of the government or the consumer, are soon captured by
the industry in question and fashioned into its apologists. 14
It is highly unlikely that this tendency is confined to
Britain. The generalization that all channels of political com-
munication become two-way channels can be supplemented by
the generalization that, unless political passions are aroused, the
party with most expert knowledge will tend to get the better of
the argument. All representative institutions, if skilfully handled,
can serve to mobilize consent to the policies of those actually
running the industry, agency or government involved.
A closely related function of representation is that of relieving
pressure on a regime from critics and dissenters. Representative
institutions can do this partly by offering opportunities for
grievances to be aired and partly by diverting the activities of
potential revolutionaries into constitutional channels. Develop-
ments in British universities since 1968 provide a good example
of this function. Faced with sit-ins and the prospect of other
disruptive activities on the part of their students, university
 System maintenanceji2I
authorities have responded by creating new forms of representa-
tion. Student/staff committees have been established in each
department and student representatives have been appointed to
Senate committees and even to the Senate itself. The purpose of
these moves, put bluntly, is to prevent the disruption of university
life by student demonstrations and protests. The developments
have other advantages, such as better communication and better
understanding, but these are balanced (from the point of view of
the university authorities) by the large increase in the amount of
time spent on committee work. Very few people would maintain
that universities run more smoothly or more effectively with
student representation than they did without it in the past. The
point is that they run more smoothly than they would now do
without it, given the present mood among students. The object
of the exercise is not to improve the decision-making process, but
to moderate conflict and protect the essential features of the
university system.
It is intrinsically difficult to find clear examples of disruption
that did not occur, but there are ways in which the British parlia-
mentary system serves the function of acting as a safety valve for
grievances. The old slogan 'redress of grievances before supply'
sums up a long chapter of parliamentary history. Questions in
Parliament are an outlet for grievances and the procedure whereby
normal business may be suspended for an emergency debate con-
stitutes another safety valve. Criticisms made in the 196os of the
ease with which ministers and officials could prevent an aggrieved
citizen's case being re-opened led to the creation of the post of
Parliamentary Commissioner, the British equivalent of the Scan-
dinavian Ombudsman. If an M.P. fails to get satisfaction at Question
Time he can now refer the grievance to the commissioner, who
has power to call for confidential files and demand explanations
from the civil servants concerned with the case. Another new
development of the 1960s, this time arising from a new social
problem rather than from a procedural problem, was the estab-
lishment of the Community Relations Commission and a set of
Community Councils for race relations, which take up grievances
and try to remove their cause by persuasion and pressure. The
local Community Relations Councils are (to some extent) repre-
sentative bodies in the microcosmic sense of the term.
s
122jThe Functions of Representation
Different examples can be found in situations of political con-
flict and potential revolt. After the Second World War the demo-
cratic regimes of France and Italy were threatened by the existence
of large and well-organized Communist parties, each able to com-
mand about four million supporters. Though Communists were
largely kept out of administrative positions no attempt was made to
prevent them from competing in elections, and energies that
might have been spent on the barricades were devoted to canvas-
sing and other methods of soliciting votes. The socializing effect
of membership of a legislative assembly was summed up earlier
in France in the often-repeated comment: 'There is more in com-
mon between two deputies only one of whom is a revolutionary
than there is between two revolutionaries only one of whom is a
deputy.' It is hazardous to suggest causal relationships in history,
but it is the case that the Communist threat to both these regimes
has been contained and relieved over the past twenty years.
In the United States some recent troubles arise partly from the
fact that extremist groups have taken to the streets instead of to
the ballot box. The system would clearly be more secure if tl1e
Black Panthers and their allies would concentrate on election
campaigns rather than on direct action. The alienation of some
student radicals is another problem, as was evidenced by the sigh
of relief that was heard in 1968 when large numbers of students
went canvassing for Eugene McCarthy. It can be argued that one
of the needs of the American political system is to engage its
radical youth in some constitutional activities connected with the
representative process.
Of course, representation by election does not always prevent
grievances building up. For instance, the city of Londonderry has
a sizeable majority of Roman Catholics among its citizens but
careful drawing of ward boundaries has led to there being a safe
and permanent majority of Protestants on the City Council. The
resulting resentment among Catholics, combined with other
exacerbating factors, had led to intermittent riots in the city over
the past fifty years, and in 1969 a particularly serious outbreak
of violence led the government to suspend the City Council and
hand over its functions to a new body called the Londonderry
Commission. The nominated members of the commission are
thought likely to represent Catholic interests more effectively than
 System maintenance/I23
before and the move has done something to relieve pressure on
the regime. A similar function has been served by the decision
to transfer some of the responsibilities of Northern Irish town
councils in respect of housing to a new housing authority which
contains a number of members nominated to represent the
Catholic community.
If representative institutions are created with the object of
relieving pressure on a regime, the timing of the exercise is crucial.
After the Easter Rising of 1916, it was decided to create a new
body called the Irish Convention to act as a forum for discussion
between representatives of all groups, including the extremists.
This move was too late, the Convention failing because it was
boycotted by the extremist groups whose presence was most
essential. On the other hand, the Conservative Party's promise
before the 1970 election to create a Scottish National Convention
was clearly too early, because the Scottish Nationalists do not
pose a serious threat and the establishment of such a Convention
would provide them with a new platform for their demands. It is
possible to draw parallels from the academic scene, since some
universities have suffered from the refusal of their authorities to
meet student demands until it was too late to avoid trouble while,
at the other extreme, it is noticeable that the two most liberal
and progressive institutions of university education in Britain
have suffered more from student violence than any of the others.

In conclusion it is suggested that this analysis of the func-

tions of political representation could serve as a general framework
for empirical research. It could be used as a starting point for the
classification of representative roles and relationships, while repre-
sentative systems could be assessed in terms of their performance
along the eight dimensions indicated. It can also serve as a basis
for classifying the considerable amount of research that has been
done on political representation.
SfConclusions
The concept of representation, like those of liberty, equality
and democracy, has been developed more by politicians and propa-
gandists than by political scientists. Like these other concepts, it
has favourable connotations, so that few people are openly opposed
to it. Like them also, it is a rather loose concept, which has been
used in different ways by different writers, each of whom tends
to claim that the meaning he attributes to it is the only proper
meaning. In this situation the role of the impartial scholar is to
disentangle the various meanings and show their relationship to
one another, just as it is his role to explain and classify the various
functions which representation can serve. It may be asked, how-
ever, whether this is enough. Should the scholar leave it at that,
or should he follow his analysis with an attempt at synthesis, so
that the study can be concluded with a definition of the true nature
and functions of representation?
My own view, very emphatically, is that he should not make
any such attempt. Unlike Hanna Pitkin, I do not believe that there
is any point in trying to establish that all forms of representation
are essentially aspects of the same thing, which (when it is identi-
fied) can be defined as 'the real nature of representation'. I think
it is clearer and more helpful to say that there are four different
types of representation, which can appropriately be described as
symbolic representation, delegated representation, microcosmic
representation and elective representation. Equally, I do not
believe that representation has any central purpose or function
which can be described as 'substantive representation' or 'actual
representation' and can provide a criterion for the assessment of
representative institutions and processes. On the contrary, I think
that representation can serve the eight functions (grouped, if one
likes, into three types of function) that have been described in
Chapter 7· It may be argued that some of these functions are
124
 Representation and responsiveness/125
more desirable or more important than others, but statements of
this kind have to be justified in each case and cannot be said to
be implied by the nature of the concept of representation.
The advantages I claim for this kind of approach are, first, that
it makes for clarity; second, that it facilitates value-free analysis
in a branch of the subject where many writings are value-laden;
third, that it lays the theoretical foundations for generalizations
(where evidence is available) about the ways in which different
types· of representative fulfil the various functions of representa-
tion; and fourth, that it may help in the construction of con-
ceptual frameworks for future research. AB an example of the
third point, it may be helpful to mention some of the generali-
zations that can be made about forms of representation in relation
to the function of increasing the responsiveness of the government.

Representation and responsiveness

A number of general points can be made about the prob-
able responsiveness of different types of representative. To begin
with, it can be said that delegated representatives are invariably
responsive to the wishes of those they represent, for this is their
function. They may enjoy some latitude in tactics but if they
lose sight of the objectives of the people for whom they are acting
their positions will be in jeopardy. Trade-union negotiators who
agree to measures that are unacceptable to their members will
normally find that their continuation as representatives is called
into question. A lawyer who ignores his client's instructions is
apt to find himself discharged.
While delegated representatives are more certainly responsive
than other types of representative to the wishes of those they
represent, are they also more likely to persuade the government
of the day to be responsive? In Britain the answer to this question
must be in the affirmative. It is through direct consultation with
pressure-group spokesmen, more than through any other channel,
that the administration acquaints itself with informed opinion.
Numerous studies tell the same general story: that the govern-
ment will normally go to considerable lengths to accommodate
the demands of affected interests when legislation is being planned
and drafted; that the government is much more resistant to
126/Conclusions
changes during the parliamentary stage; but that after the legislation
is on the Statute Book the department concerned is usually
willing to be accommodating on questions of administration. 1
The reasons for this, in essence, are first, that the groups have
specialized information that the government probably needs, and
will certainly respect; and second, that consultation with group
spokesmen is the best way of ensuring the consent, or at any rate
the acquiescence, of the sections of the community most directly
affected by the government's policies. It is only in very exceptional
circumstances that this procedure is dispensed with, as in I970
when the government drafted its bill to reform industrial relations
without consulting the trade unions, and the fact that many
British unions threatened to sabotage this reform by all legal
means will presumably tend to strengthen the convention that
group spokesmen should normally be consulted by the govern-
ment at the drafting stage.
If we tum from delegated representation to symbolic repre-
sentation we tum to the other end of the spectrum, for symbolic
representatives are not normally expected to respond to anyone's
wishes. However, microcosmic representatives and elective repre-
sentatives fall somewhere between these extremes.
That microcosmic representatives are generally expected to be
more responsive than symbolic representatives is illustrated by
(for instance) the complaints that immigrant groups in Britain
have made about the composition of bodies dealing with race
relations, it being asserted that the West Indian or Asian mem-
bers of these bodies are not typical of the immigrants as a whole
and are therefore no more than symbolic representatives of the
immigrant communities. Critics who complain about the unrepre-
sentative composition of the House of Commons make the further
assumption that a body of elected representatives would be more
likely to be responsive to popular wishes if the elected persons
also represented the electorate in a microcosmic sense.
Whether these assumptions are valid is a rather difficult empiri-
cal question. It has been shown that in Britain differences of
attitudes among M.P .s are to some extent related to differences
of social background. In the Parliamentary Labour Party members
of the older professions tend to be on the right of the party, mem-
bers of newer professions such as journalism and teaching tend
 Representation and responsiveness/IZ7
to be on the left, and manual workers tend to be less concerned
with ideological questions and 'more concerned with the detailed
implementation of social reforms'. 2 But it is not entirely clear
what bearing this has on the responsiveness of (a) the Parlia-
mentary Labour Party or (b) the House of Commons as a whole
to (x) the views of constituents or (y) the views of the entire
electorate. Again, it has been established that middle-class people
are usually more tender-minded than working-class people, 3 and
on this basis it might be argued that the over-representation of
the middle classes in Parliament is responsible for the fact that in
recent years Parliament has been more tender-minded than the
general public on such an issue as capital punishment. But this
is a rather simplistic argument and it would probably be mislead-
ing to attribute much significance to it.
In the U.S. Congress virtually all members are middle-class
and about 70 per cent of them are lawyers, there having been very
little change in these respects over the past century. In the light
of British experience it might be suggested that this dominance
by lawyers makes Congress more conservative than it would be
if its members were drawn from a wider variety of occupations.
But this is a highly speculative suggestion and even if it were
valid it is not clear what its implications would be for the respon-
siveness of Congress to the views and demands of the American
public. In short we do not know very much about the relation-
ship between microcosmic representation and the responsiveness
of representative bodies.
The responsiveness of elected representatives, on the other hand,
has been the subject of a great deal of research. Innumerable his-
torical studies have explained how some movements of public
opinion have influenced the behaviour of elected persons and have
asserted that other movements of opinion have been ignored. The
election results of the past have been explained in terms of the
policy issues that were debated during the campaign and it has
often been said that governments (or presidents) came to power
with a mandate to do various things they had promised. Since
1945 documentary studies of this kind have been supplemented
by numerous sample surveys of public opinion and voting behavi-
our. One of the most striking conclusions to emerge from these
surveys is that voters are far less concerned about policy issues
128/Conclusions
than had previously been thought. Much of the American evi-
dence on this question has been summarized by John Wahlke in
an article which drew the following conclusions about the know-
ledge and attitudes of voters in relation to Congress:
I Few citizens entertain interests that clearly represent
'policy demands' or 'policy expectations' or wishes and
desires that are readily convertible into them.
2 Few people even have thought-out, consistent, and
firmly held positions on most matters of public policy.
3 It is highly doubtful that policy demands are enter-
tained even in the form of broad orientations, outlooks,
or belief systems.
4 Large proportions of citizens lack the instrumental
knowledge about political structures, processes, and
actions that they would need to communicate policy
demands or expectations if they had any.
5 Relatively few citizens communicate with their repre-
sentatives.
6 Citizens are not especially interested or informed about
the policy-making activities of their representatives as
such.
7 Relatively few citizens have any clear notion that they
are making policy demands or policy choices when
they vote. 4
The evidence from Britain, though not so voluminous,
points in the same direetion. Opinions on issues can be elicited
from voters but the relationship between policy preferences and
party preferences is not at all close. 6 Party preferences are to be
explained partly in terms of traditional and class loyalties and
partly in terms of the general image people have of the com-
petence of the government and the opposition. The authors of
one survey concluded that no more than 10 per cent of the voters
in the 1951 election could have made their choice on the basis
ofan issue or set of issues 6 and the authors of subsequent surveys
have found it impossible to isolate the issues that were important
and assess their influence. Findings of this kind have destroyed
the validity of the mandate theory, except as a purely normative
theory about what is desirable. They have also cast doubt on some
 Representation and responsi'venessj129
of the findings of historians: the Conservatives may have lost the
1923 election because the electors disliked the prospect of a pro-
tective tariff but it is now difficult to feel much confidence in this
kind of assessment. A student of the 1950 election who used
nothing but documentary sources would probably conclude that
the election was dominated by the question of steel nationalization,
but the polls show that the great majority of electors was totally
uninterested in this issue.
However, it is possible to push this line of reasoning too far,
and Miller and Stokes have indicated some important reservations.
The apathy of the majority may not be crucial, they suggest, be-
cause 'the Congressman is a dealer in increments and margins'
whose 'record may have a very real bearing on his electoral success
or failure without most of his constituents ever knowing what
that record is'. 7 Secondly, the representative may over-rate his
visibility to his constituents and therefore be more responsive
than he actually needs to be. Thirdly, the relationship between
voters and their congressman is 'not a simple bilateral one but is
complicated by the presence of all manner of intermediaries'. 8
Fourthly, the degree of popular influence varies very substantially
between issues, being negligible in relation to foreign affairs but
very considerable in relation to civil rights.
At the local level, the responsiveness of American city councils
has been assessed in a comparative study by Prewitt and Eulau.
They found that, of the 82 councils they studied, 20 were respon-
sive to the wishes of an attentive public, 26 were responsive to
ad-hoc pressure groups concerned with particular issues, and the
remaining 36 'did not in any discernible manner seem to act in
response to any politically organised views in the public'. 9 There
was some relationship between electoral insecurity and respon-
siveness but lack of responsiveness did not lead to electoral dis-
content. What emerges from this study is not the existence of
causal relationships determining the extent of responsiveness but
the existence of syndromes, with one type of local political system
being characterized by electoral competition, insecurity of tenure,
public accountability and responsiveness while the other type of
system was characterized by the opposite of all these features.
Very few direct attempts have been made to compare the
responsiveness of different types of representatives dealing with
130/Conclusions
similar issues and the only successful one known to the author
is Peterson's study of the representation of poor people in com-
munity action programmes. 10 This study compares developments
in Philadelphia, where representatives were elected by residents
in poor areas of the city, New York, where representatives were
chosen by community organizations in poor areas, and Chicago,
where representatives were nominated by public officials. The
results are conceptually as well as intrinsically interesting, par-
ticularly in the comparison between Philadelphia and New York.
In the terms suggested in this book, the Philadelphia representa-
tives can be classified as elective representatives and the New
Yorkers as delegated representatives. We would expect the latter
to be more certainly responsive than the former to the wishes and
interests of their constituents and this expectation was fully
confirmed by the study.
However, Peterson did not set it out in this way. Using Hanna
Pitkin's categories of 'formal representation' and 'substantive' or
'actual representation', he regarded the methods of selection as
different types of formal representation and asserted that the
arrangements in New York provided for 'less formal representa-
tion' than those in Philadelphia. He then presented the result of
the comparison as something of a paradox, in which the city with
more formal representation ended up with less actual representa-
tion. It seems clear that this paradox is artificial and I think this
example supports my view that Mrs Pitkin's categories are
somewhat unhelpful (though in all fairness I must add that
she is not responsible for Peterson's assumption that formal
representation is something of which a group can have more or
less).

A last word
It is not proposed to extend this discussion to the other
functions of representation, because my object in this final chapter
is simply to illustrate the advantages that I think can be gained
from adopting the conceptual approach I have outlined, not to
conduct anything in the nature of a general review of research.
It may be appropriate, however, to end with two reflections on
research in this field.
 A last word/131
The first is that very much more research has been conducted
on forms of popular control than on the other functions of repre-
sentation. There have been numerous studies related to respon-
siveness and accountability and innumerable studies of the
mechanism of peaceful change. Partly because it is easier to study
elections than almost anything else and partly because of the
ideological predispositions of Western political scientists, vast
resources have been poured into the analysis of electoral systems,
campaign methods, and voting behaviour. Not so much has been
done on leadership and responsibility and very much less attention
has been devoted to the role of representative institutions in
system maintenance.
The second point is that the study of system maintenance has
suffered more considerably than most branches of the subject
from the gap between empirical and historical research. Empirical
studies in this field tend to be simply in terms of public attitudes,
with little or no historical perspective and without relating these
attitudes to traditions, to behaviour, or to the relative efficacy of
different types of institutions in mobilizing consent and support
for the regime. 11 Historical studies tend to focus on unique events
and not to be concerned with the illustration of general problems.
It is true that the countless studies of individual revolutionary
movements have recently been supplemented by comparative
studies of the nature and incidence of revolution, but there is as
yet no study known to the author of the ways in which repre-
sentative institutions have served to precipitate, delay or avoid
revolutions. It is not very original to plead for more integration
between empirical and historical studies but this is an area in
which the plea seems particularly relevant. For if political scien-
tists are to gain a fuller understanding of the role of representative
processes and institutions in a political system they must supple-
ment their elaborate research into forms of popular control by
systematic enquiries into the ways in which representation helps
to support regimes by mobilizing consent, relieving pressure and
investing the regime with an aura of legitimacy.
 Notes
and
References

1/The Meaning of Representation

I Hanna F. Pitkin, The Concept of Representation.
2 Ibid., pp. Io-II.
3 Ibid., p. 225.
4 Karl Marx, Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, in T. B. Bottomore
(ed.) Karl Marx: Early Writings, p. 58.
5 David Easton, The Political System.
6 In this paragraph I have changed my mind since I wrote Representative
and Responsible Government.
7 See B. C. Parekh, 'India: A Case Study in the Ideology of Representation',
mimeographed paper presented at the 7th World Congress of the Inter-
national Political Science Association, Brussels, I967.

2/Medieval Concepts and Practices

I See Walter Ullmann, A History of Political Thought: the Middle Ages.
2 S. B. Chrimes, English Constitutional History, p. 53·
3 John Fortescue, The Governance of England, chap. XII.
4 Ullmann, op. cit., p. I3.
5 Ibid.
6 Ibid.
7 Christopher Hill, Puritanism and Revolution, p. 57.
8 Ibid., p. 58.
9 Antonio Marongiu, Medieval Parliaments, p. 47·
IO Ibid., p. 52.
I I Ibid., p. 62.
12 E. Perroy, cited by Marongiu, op. cit., p. 99·
13 C. H. Mcilwain, 'Medieval Estates', in Cambridge Medieval History,
p. 68o.
14 Quoted ibid., p. 687.
15 Quoted in Chrimes, op. cit., p. 79· This formula remained unchanged from
1294 to 1872.
16 Helen M. Cam, Liberties and Communities in Medieval England, p. 225.
I7 G. L. Haskins, The Growth of English Representative Government, p. 10.
18 William Stubbs, Select Charters, p. 395·
19 Cam, op. cit., pp. 226-7.

3/The Birth of Representative Government

I A remark by John Locke quoted in J. W. N. Watkins, Hobbes's System of
Ideas, p. 73·
2 This point is made (rather more strongly) in Pitkin, op. cit., chap. 2.
133
134/Notes and References
3 See John Locke, Second Treatise of Government, section 140.
4 For an excellent summary and criticism of Locke's political ideas see John
Plamenatz, Man and Society, chap. 6.
S Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract, chap. XV, p. 83.
6 J.P. Kenyon, The Stuarts, pp. 2S-7·
7 See A. S. P. Woodhouse (ed.), Puritanism and Liberty, p. 66.
s Ibid., p. s6.
9 Algernon Sidney, Discourses Concerning Government, chap. III, p. 451.
10 Parliamentary History, Vol. 9, col. 421.
II Ibid., Vol. 9, col. 43S·
12 Edmund Burke, Works, Vol. I, p. 447·
13 Reprinted in S. K. Padover (ed.), Thomas Jefferson on Democracy, p. 27.
14 Ibid., p. 22.
IS See D. J. Boorstin, The Americans: the National Experience, pp. 489-91.
16 Ibid., p. 494·
17 See the letter quoted in Carl Becker, The Declaration of Independence,
p. 26.
18 Alexander Hamilton et. al., The Federalist, No. 52.
19 In a letter to S. Kercheval, quoted in Padover, op. cit., p. 35·
20 See particularly Nos. 10 and 51.
21 The Federalist, No. 68.
22 Isaiah Berlin, 'Montesquieu', in Proceedings of the British Academy, Vol.
41, Oxford University Press, London, 1956, p. 272.
23 Norman L. Torrey, Les Philosophes, p. 9·
24 In this paragraph I follow the convenient summary in S. E. Finer's
'Chronological Note' in the English translation of E. J. Sieyes, What is
the Third Estate?, pp. 33-48.
25 Sieyes, op. cit., p. 58.
26 Peter Campbell, in Introduction to Sieyes, op. cit., p. 15.
27 See Giovanni Sartori, 'Representational Systems', in International Encyclo-
paedia of the Social Sciences, The Macmillan Co. and the Free Press, New
York, 1968, p. 466.
28 For a succinct discussion of Robespierre~s political ideas, see Alfred
Cobban, Aspects of the French Revolution, chaps. 8 and 9·

4/Eiective Representation and the Franchise

I George Cornewall Lewis, Remarks on the Use and Abuse of Some Politcal
Terms, p. xos.
2 Joseph Priestley, Essay on the First Principles of Government.
3 Richard Price, Observations on the Nature of Civil Liberty and Additional
Observations.
4 SeeP. A. Brown, The French Revolution in English History, p. 84.
S Jeremy Bentham, Constitutional Code, in the Bowring edition of Bentham's
Works.
6 James Mill, Essay on Government, p. 84.
7 Ibid., p. 67.
8 Ibid., p. 69.
9 Ibid., p. 70.
10 Ibid., p. 73·
II J. F. S. Ross, Parliamentary Representation, p. xo6.
12 Ibid., p. 109.
 Notes and References/135
13 Ibid., p. II2.
14 The Times (London), January 17, 1958.
15 In a programme called 'Let's Find Out', broadcast on September I, 19(50.
16 See H. Finer, The British Civil Service; H. J. Laski, Parliamentary Govern-
ment in England; H. R. G. Greaves, The British Constitution; and R. K.
Kelsall, Higher Civil Servants in Britain.
17 Clive Jenkins, 'The Labour Party and the Public Corporations', in The
Insiders, a supplement to Universities and the Left Review, London, 1957,
p. 31.
I8 Ibid., p. 45·
19 James Mill, op. cit., p. 89.
20 Ibid., p. 90·
21 Peter Campbell, French Electoral Systems and Elections, 1789-1957·
22 Campbell, op. cit., gives an excellent short summary of each successive
electoral system in France.
23 Quoted by J. S. Mill in Dissertations and Discussions, Vol. II, pp. 28-9.
24 J. S. Mill, Considerations on Representative Government, p. 129.
25 Ibid., p. 130.
26 The contrast between the elder and the younger Mill has been well brought
out in an unpublished paper by Alan Ryan entitled 'Two Views of Democ-
racy. James and John Stuart Mill', which was presented to the Annual
Conference of the U.K. Political Studies Association in 1969.
27 J. S. Mill, Consideration .•. , op. cit., p. 213.
28 In this section I am greatly indebted to the concise summary in W. J. M.
Mackenzie, Free Elections.

5/Representing Interests
I The Fortnightly Review, October 1876, p. 449·
2 The Nineteenth Century, November 1877, p. 516.
3 The Federalist, No. 10, p. 43· Italics added.
4 Ibid.
5 Ibid., p. 44·
6 The Federalist, No. 52, p. 269.
7 The Federalist, No. 57, pp. 292-3.
8 Quoted in Charles 0. Jones, Every Second Year, p. 36.
9 The Federalist, No. 10, p. 47· See also No. 51, p. 266.
10 See Nigeria: Report of the Commission appointed to enquire into the fears of
Minorities and the means of allaying them, H.M.s.o., London, Cmnd. 505 of
1958.
II The Federalist, No. 51, p. 265.
12 Quoted in August 0. Spain, The Political Theory of John C. Calhoun,
p. 79·
13 John C. Calhoun, Disquisition on Government, p. 76.
14 Ibid., p. 14.
15 Ibid., p. 28.
16 See A. F. Bentley, The Process of Government, passim.
17 See David Truman, The Governmental Process, passim.

&/Representing Opinions
I See Thomas Hare, Treatise on the Election of Representatives, and Henry
Fawcett, Mr. Hare's Reform Bill Simplified and Explained.
I36fNotes and References
2 J. S. Mill, Considerations on Representative Government, p. I96.
3 Ibid., p. 2or.
4 Ibid., p. 2I6.
5 Ibid., p. 249.
6 Ibid., pp. 209-IO.
7 Principles of Political Obligation, Section 9·
8 A. D. Lindsay, Essentials of Democracy, p. 33· Italics added.
9 L. T. Hobhouse, Liberalism, pp. I24-S·
IO H. J. Laski and others, The Development of the Representative System in
Our Times, p. I3.
II Ernest Barker, Reflections on Government, p. 36.
I2 J. Ramsay MacDonald, Socialism and Government, Vol. I, p. viii.
I3 Ibid., p. 2I.
I4 George B. Galloway, The Legislative Process in Congress, p. 244·
IS Walter Lippmann, The Public Philosophy, p. 42.
I6 Charles E. Gilbert, 'Operative Doctrines of Representation', in American
Political Science Review, Vol. 58, I963, p. 6o6.
I7 See Henry Maine, Popular Government.
18 See M. Ostrogorski, Democracy and the Organisation of Political Parties.
19 Sidney Low, The Government of England, pp. 58-9.
20 American Political Science Association, Towards a More Responsible Two-
Party System, pp. 17-18.
21 Fritz Morstein Marx, 'Party Responsibility and the Legislative Pro-
gramme', in John C. Wahlke and Heinz Eulau (eds.), Legislative Behaviour
at p. 59·
22 Quoted in American Political Science Review, Vol. 57, 1963, p. 673.
23 A. H. Birch, Representative and Responsible Government, p. 12I.
24 Heinz Eulau, 'Changing Views of Representation', reprinted in Micro-
Macro Political Analysis, p. 77·
25 Ibid.
26 Ibid., p. 83.
27 Quoted in 'Political and Economic Planning', Advisory Committees in British
Government, p. 6.
7/The Functions of Representation
David E. Apter, Some Conceptual Approaches to the Study of Modernisation,
p. 3II.
2 Henry B. Mayo, An Introduction to Democratic Theory, p. 6o.
3 John C. Wahlke, Heinz Eulau, William Buchanan and Leroy C. Ferguson,
The Legislative System, pp. 27o-2.
4 Ibid., p. 394·
5 Ibid., p. 274.
6 J. Roland Pennock, 'Political Representation: an Overview', in J. Roland
Pennock and John W. Chapman (eds), Representation, p. 13.
7 Joseph A. Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, p. 269.
8 Quoted in Mayo, op. cit., p. 97·
9 V. 0. Key, Politics, Parties and Pressure Groups, p. 10.
10 Heinz Eulau, Micro-Macro Political Analysis, p. 205.
II House of Lords Debates, April 23, 1962.
12 Walter Lippmann, The Public Philosophy, p. 46.
13 Rousseau, The Social Contract, pp. 8-9.
14 Daily Telegraph, January 4, 197I.
 Notes and References/I37
8/Conclusions
I The best general studies of pressure group activities in Britain are S. E.
Finer, Anonymous Empire, and Allen M. Potter, Organised Groups in British
National Politics.
2 }. Blonde!, Voters, Parties and Leaders, p. I47·
3 See H. J. Eysenck, The Psychology of Politics.
4 John Wahlke, 'Public Policy and Representative Government: the Role
of the Represented', mimeographed paper prepared for the 7th World
Congress of the International Political Science Association, I967.
5 See Blonde!, op. cit., pp. 75-87.
6 R. S. Milne and H. C. Mackenzie, Straight Fight, p. I39·
7 Warren E. Miller and Donald E. Stoke, 'Constituency Influence in Con-
gress', in American Political Science Review, Vol. 57, I963, p. 55·
8 Ibid.
9 Kenneth Prewitt and Heinz Eulau, 'Political Matrix and Political Repre-
sentation', in American Political Science Review, Vol. 63, I969, p. 429·
IO Paul E. Peterson, 'Forms of Representation: Participation of the Poor in
the Community Action Program', in American Political Science Review,
Vol. 64, I970.
I I Some examples are Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba, The Civic Culture,
Ian Budge, Agreement and the Stability of Democracy, and }. Dennis,
L. Lindberg and D. McCrone, 'Support for Nation and Government
among English Children', in British Journal of Political Science, Vol. I
I97I.
 Bibliography

The handful of texts on representation which have acquired the status

of classics have all been discussed in this book and need not be singled out for
special mention here. In addition to these, there is a large literature of theoretical
and propagandist works in favour of this or that view of the proper nature of
representation; an even larger literature on the working of representative insti-
tutions; and an ever-growing number of studies of the political behaviour of
both represented and representatives. It would not be feasible to list all these
works and it is not easy to draw a clear line between those which raise problems
of conceptual interest and those which do not. Accordingly, this bibliography
is restricted to (a) the books to which I have referred in the text and (b) a
limited number of other books which seem to me to be of central importance.

ALMOND, GABRIEL and VERBA, SIDNEY, The Civic Culture, Little, Brown & Co.,
Boston 1965.
AMERICAN POLITICAL ScmNCE AssoCIATION, Towards a More Responsible Two-
Party System, Rinehart & Co., New York 1950.
APTER, DAVID E., Some Conceptual Approaches to the Study of Modernisation,
Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J. 1968.
BACHRACH, PETER, The Theory of Democratic Elitism, Little, Brown & Co.,
Boston 1967.
BARKER, ERNEST, Reflections on Government, Oxford University Press,London 1942.
BECKER, CARL L., The Declaration of Independence, Harcourt Brace & Co., New
York 1922, reprinted 1942.
BEER, SAMUEL H., Modern British Politics, Faber & Faber, London 1965.
BENTHAM, JEREMY, Collected Works (ed. John Bowring), William Tait, Edin-
burgh 1843.
BENTLEY, A. F., The Process of Government, first published 1908, second edition
Principia Press, Bloomington, Indiana 1935.
BERELSON, BERNARD, LAZARSFELD, PAUL and McPHEE, WILLIAM, Voting,
Chicago University Press, Chicago 1954.
BmCH, A. H., Representative and Responsible Government, Allen & Unwin,
London 1964.
---Small-Town Politics, Oxford University Press, London 1959.
BLONDEL, JEAN, Voters, Parties and Leaders, Penguin Books, Harmondsworth,
Middlesex 1963.
BOORSTIN, DANmL J., The Americans: the National Experience, Penguin Books,
Harmondsworth, Middlesex 1969.
BOTTOMORE, T. B., Elites and Society, Watts, London 1964.
- - - (ed.), Karl Marx: Early Writings, McGraw-Hill, New York 1964.
BRoWN, P. A., The French Revolution in English History, Lockwood & Sons,
London 1918.
 Bibliography/139
BtJDGB, IAN, Agreement and the Stability of Democracy, Markham Publishing
Co., Chicago 1970.
BURKB, EDMUND, Works, Bohn's Standard Library, London 1887.
BURNS, JAMBS M., The Deadlock of Democracy, John Calder, London 1964.
BtJTLBR, DAVID and ROSB, RICHARD, The British General Election of 1959,
Macmillan, London 196o.
BuTLER, DAVID and STOKES, DONALD, Political Change in Britain, Macmillan,
London 1969.
BUTLIIR, J. R. M., The Passing of the Great Reform Bill, Longmans, London
1914.
CAI.HoVN, JoHN C., Disquisition on GO'Oernment, first published in 1853, re-
printed by Peter Smith, New York 1943.
CAM, HBLBN M., Liberties and Communities in Medieval England, Cambridge
University Press, Cambridge 1944 and Merlin Press, London 1963.
CAMPBBLL, ANGus, CoNVBRSB, Plm.IP E., MILLER, WARRBN and SToKES,
DONALD E., The American Voter, John Wiley & Sons, New York 196o.
CAMPBBLL, PBTBR, French Electoral Systems and Elections, 1789-1957, Faber &
Faber, London 1958.
CHRIMBs, S. B., English Constitutional History, Oxford University Press, London
1947, fourth edition 1967.
CoBBAN, ALFRBD, Aspects of the French Revolution, Paladin, London 1971.
DAHL, RoBBRT A., A Preface to Democratic Theory, Chicago University Press,
Chicago 1956.
DE GRAZIA, ALFRED, Public and Republic, A. A. Knopf, New York 1951.
EASTON, DAVID, The Political System, A. A. Knopf, New York 1953.
EULAu, HEINz, Micro-Macro Political Analysis, Aldine Publishing Co., Chicago
1969.
EULAU, HEINZ, ELDERSVELD, SAMUEL J. and JANOWITZ, MoRRIS, Political Be-
haviour, The Free Press, Glencoe, Illinois 1956.
EYSENCK, H. J., The Psychology of Politics, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London
1954·
FARRAND, MAx, The Framing of the Constitution of the United States, Yale
University Press, New Haven 1913.
- - - The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, 4 vols., Yale University
Press, New Haven 19II.
FAWCETT, H., Mr. Hare's Reform Bill Simplified and Explained, T. Brettell,
London 186o.
FINBR, HERMAN, The British Civil Service, Allen & Unwin, London 1937·
FINBR, S. E., Anonymous Empire, The Pall Mall Press, London 1958.
- - - Comparative Government, Allen Lane The Penguin Press, London 1970.
FoRTESCUE, SIR JoHN, The Governance of England, written 1471, first printed
edition 1546, revised edition, ed. Charles Plummer, The Clarendon Press,
Oxford 1885.
FRIEDRICH, CARL J., Constitutional GO'Oernment and Democracy, Ginn & Co.,
Boston 1950.
GAllOWAY, G. B., The Legislative Process in Congress, Thomas Crowell, New
York 1953.
GIBBONS, P. A., Ideas of Political Representation in Parliament, Basil Blackwell,
Oxford 1914.
GooCH, G. P., English Democratic Ideas in the Seventeenth Century, Cambridge
University Press, Cambridge 1954·
Greaves, H. R. G., The British Constitution, Allen & Unwin, London 1938.
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GREEN, T. H., Principles of Political Obligation, first published 1882, new edition
Longmans, Green & Co., London 1941.
HAMBURGER, Joseph, Intellectuals in Politics: John Stuart Mill and the Philo-
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Index

Abolition of slavery, 85, 86 Bentham, Jeremy, 44, 53-8, 6o, 72, 89,
Abortion, 75 9I
Abortion Law Reform Society, I04 Bentley, A. F., 87-8
Absolutism, 40; age of, 30 Berlin, Isaiah, 44
Accountability, 107 Birmingham, 51
Adam, I7 Birth control, 75
Advisory committees, 120 Black Panthers, 122
African states, assembly composition, Black Prince, 35
20,6o Board of Trade, 4I
Agreements of the People, 37 Boothby, Lord, 58-9
Algexian Liberation Front, 116 Bosanquet, Bexnard, 93
Ambassadors, 15, 16 Boycotting of elections, II8
America, see United States of America Bradley, F. H., 93
American colonies, 31, 4o-2 Bristol, 39, 79
American Political Science Associa- British Transport Commission, 59
tion, 99 Broadcasting Council, proposed, 120
Animal welfare groups, 102 Burke, Edmund, 39, 53, 78-80
Annual conferences, 112 Burns, James M., 99
Annual elections, 52, 54
Anti-Vivisection Society, 104
Apartheid, and the franchise, 69 Calhoun,JohnC.,78, 84-5
Apter, David, 106-7 California, 85
Arab world, 17 Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament,
Arabs, in Israel, 73 103
Aristotle, 41 Canada, cabinet structure, 19, 6o, I I9i
Ascending theory of authority, 23-4 English/French division, 6o, 87
Asian states, assembly composition, 20 Canadians, voting rights in Northern
Asians, in Kenya, 69 Ireland, 68
Asquith, H. H., 95 Cape Province, 69
Assemblies, medieval, 25-9 Capital punishment, 89, I 10
Assembly of Notables (France), 45 Capitalist states, 74-5
Attorney, powex of, 32 Castile, 25
Augustine, St, 23 Catalonia, 25
Austria, 48 Catholic Church, 22, 30
Authority, concept of, 13 Censorship, 89
Central control, Io6-7
Balanced ticket, 20 Charles I, King of England, 35
Bantus, 69 Chartists, 53
Barker, Sir Ernest, 95 Chicago, 130
Belgium, constitution, 48; linguistic China, Communist Party, I07i man-
conflicts, 87 darins, 117

143
144/Index
Chinese, in Indonesia, 73; in Malaya,
6S; in Malaysia, 6o
Christ, I7
Christian theology, 17
Church reform, 35
Churches in the Modern State, 7S
Churchill, Sir Winston, uS
Citizenship, 6S-9
Civil rights groups, I02
Civil Service, 59
Civil War (England), 35
Civil War (u.s.), 64
Class interests, representation of, 72,
74-S, IOO
Cleveland, 2I
Clientalism, I04
Coalition government, uS
Cole, G. D. H., 7S
Colonial administration, 4I-2
Coloured Persons Representative
Council,69
Committee on Political Parties (u.s.),
99
Common Market, I IO
Communications, I6, 2S, 4I, 119
Communist Manifesto, 46
Communist Party, 117; in China, I07;
in France, I22; in Italy, I22; in
Soviet Union, I07
Communist systems, 115
Community Councils, I2I
Community Relations Commission,
I2I
Community Relations Councils, I2I
Condillac, Etienne de, 44
Condorcet, Marquis de, 44, 53
Congress (u.s.), 43, so, 6o, S3, Ss, I I3,
119, I27-S
Congress Party (India), 2I
Conscription, u6
Consent, government by, 33-4; and
representation, 16, 10S, 119-20
Conservation groups, I02
Conservative Party, 1923 election,
I29; party discipline, 9S; and the
working class, 77-S; see also Tories
Constantine, Sir Learie, 21
Constituents, relationship with elected
representatives, I9-20, 3S-40, 79
Constitutional Convention, 53
Consultative committees, I20
Consumers' committees, I20
Conventions, I02
Cotton Board, I04
Credit restrictions, u6
Customary law, 23
Daily Telegraph, I20
D' Alembert, Jean le Rond, 44
Danegeld, 26
Danton, Georges-Jacques, 53
Decimal currency, I IO
Declaration of Independence (u.s.),
31, 33. 42, 4S, I06
De Gaulle, Charles, 116
Delegated representation, 15-I6;
limitations, S6-S
Democracy, concept of, 124; direct,
34.43
Denmark, 4S
Department of Education, I04
Descending theory of authority, 23-4
De Tocqueville, Alexis, see Tocque-
ville, Alexis de
Devaluation, u6
Developing nations, 101
Dicey, A. V., S7
Dictatorships, 114; military, 115, 117
Diderot, Denis, 44
Direct democracy, 34, 43
Discourses Concerning Government, 38
Disquisition on Government (Calhoun),
S4
Disraeli, Benjamin, 62
Drug supply, 9I
East Africa, Asian settlers, 56
Easter Rising, I23
Easton, David, IS
Economic classes, 74-5
Education, and the franchise, 6o,
64-7; see also Universities
Edward, the Black Prince, 35
Edward I, King of England, 29
Edward II, King of England, 25
Eire, 6S
Elected representatives, 19-2I
Elections, I9-20, uS; frequency, 3S,
42, 54, 55, So-I; manifestos, 9S, 99,
100; see also Franchise
Elizabeth I, Queen of England, 35
Emergency debates, I21
Encyclopaedia Britannica, 6I
England, Anglo-Saxon kings, 23; birth
of representative government, 30
 31; Civil War, 35; development of
parliamentary assemblies, 22, 25,
26-9, 35-7; English Revolution,
1688, 33, 36; franchise, 26, 36;
imposition of taxes, 34; Norman
Yoke, 24; philosophical approach to
representation, 13; war with France,
25; Whig party, 37-40; see also
Great Britain
Equality, concept of, 13, 124
Essay on GO'Vernment (Mill), 55, 61-2
Estates-General (France), 25, 30,
45-6, so, 6o
Ethics, professional, 15, 16
Eulau, Heinz, IOI, 109, II6, 129
European Economic Community, uo
The Federalist, 42-3
Feudalism, decline of, 30
Fifth Republic, 109
Figgis, 78
Finer, Herman, 59
Fortescue, Sir John, 23
Founding Fathers, 43, So
Fourth Republic, ro8, II3
France, birth of representative govern-
ment, 30, 3I, 44-7, 48, so; Com-
munist Party, 122; constitution, 63;
Estates-General, 25, 30, 45-6, so,
6o; Fifth Republic, 109; Fourth
Republic, 109, II3; franchise, 62-3;
medieval parliaments, 25-6; Paine
flees to, 53; representatives as
trustees, 6o
Franchise, 36, 45, so-71, 92
French Canadians, 19, 6o
French Revolution, 44-7, 53, 61, 62,
70, 8I, I06
Galloway, George, 96
Geneva, 35
George III, King of England, 31, 41,
42
German Federal Republic, 48
Germanic tribes, 23
Germany, 48, u8; medieval, 26
Ghana, 107
Gilbert, Charles, 96-7
Ginger groups, 102
Gladstone, William Ewart, 76
Goal specification, 106-7
Government by consent, 33-4
Great Britain, American colonies, 3I•
4o-2; citizenship, 68-9; consultative
committees, 120; electoral reform,
50-9; group interests, 102-4; im-
migration of African-Asians, 56;
Irish voting rights, 68; Parliament-
ary composition, 20; Parliamentary
elections, u8; Parliamentary re-
form, 50-9, ro6; political parties,
97-100; race relations, 121, 126;
representatives as trustees, 6o-2;
representation on the Security
Council, 19; universities, 12o-r,
123; virtual representation, 51-2;
voter behaviour, 128-9; women and
the franchise, 69-70; see also
England
Greaves, H. R. G., 59
Greeks, ancient, 13
Green, T. H., 93, 94
Grey, Edward, Viscount, 95
Group interests, 102-4, I 12, 120,
125-6
Hailsham, Lord, u6
Haldane, Richard Burdon, Lord, 95
Haldane Committee on the Machinery
of Government, 103
Hall, Governor, 4o-2
Hamilton, Alexander, 42, 43, So-x
Hammer and sickle, 17
Happiness, 44, 54, 55-6, 72, 76
Hare, Thomas, 89-91, 92
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 94
Helvetius, Claude Adrien, 44-5
Henry III, King of England, 29
Hill, Christopher, 24
Hindus, 21
Hitler, Adolf, II4
Hobbes, Thomas, 31-2, 33, 35, 40, 47
Hobhouse, L. T., 95
Hogg, Quintin, see Hailsham, Lord
Holbach, Paul Heinrich Dietrich, 44
Holland, 48
House of Assembly (South Africa), 69
House of Commons, balance of power,
35; length of parliaments, 38; and
political parties, 98; reform, 5 I, 54
House of Lords, 21, 35, 54
House of Representatives (u.s.), So-x
Idealist attitude of representation, 93-7
146/lndex
Ignorance, and the franchise, 45, 6o, Labour Representative Committee, I9
61,64-7 Landowners, representation, 5 I
Immigration, 56-7 Laski, H. J., 59, 95
India, and African-Asian immigration, Law, customary, 23
56; brahmins, 117; linguistic con- Lawyers, 15-16, 125
flicts, 87; partition of, 20; Leadership, I07, 108, II4-I7
Indian communities, in Africa, 56; in Legislative Assembly (France), 62
Malaysia, 6o Legitimizing function, Io8, II7-I9
Indians, voting rights in Northern Leicester, 51
Ireland, 68 Leon, 25
Indonesia, 73 Levellers, 36, 37, 9I
Industrial revolution, 51 Leviathan (Hobbes), 3I-2
Industrial Relations Bill, 126 Lewes, 38
Institutional coherence, 107 Lewis, Sir George, 52
Interests, class, 72, 74-8, roo; groups, Liberals, and class conflict, 76; and
102-4, II2, 120, 125-6; personal, growth of the Labour Party, 76-7;
72-4, roo; sectional, 72, 78-86, ror individualistic assumptions of, 95
International politics, 18, 19 Liberty, concept of, I3, 124; political,
Interviews, doorstep, 109 44
Ireland, campaigns by Charles I, 35; Lindsay, A. D., 95
Northern, 59, 68, 73, 87, 122-3; Linguistic conflicts, 6o, 87
Republic of, 68 Lippmann, Walter, 96, II6
Irish Convention, 123 Liverpool, 5 I
Israel, 73 Locke, John, 3I, 33-4, 42, 45
Italy, Communist Pary, 122; consti- Londonderry, 122
tution, 48; medieval, 26 Louis XIV, King of France, 30
Low, Sidney, 98
James I, King of England, 30 Lowe, Robert, 76
Japan, n8 Loyalty and the franchise, 70
Jefferson, Thomas, 34, 4o-42
Jesus Christ, 17 McCarthy, Eugene, I22
Jinnah, M. A., 21 MacDonald, J. Ramsay, 95-6
John, King of England, 25, 26-7 Machiavelli, 24
Johnson, Lyndon Baines, 81 Madison, James, 42, 78-81, 82-7
Justice, concept of, 13 Magna Carta, 24, 26
Maidstone, 38
Kelsall, R. K., 59 Maine, Sir Henry, 97
Kennedy, John F., 56 Majority, rule of the, 33
Kent, 38 Malaya, 68
Kenya, Asian population, 56, 69; and Malaysia, 6o
the franchise, 67; Mau Mau crisis, Manchester, 51
70 Manhood suffrage, 36, 52, 54, 57, 6I,
Key, V. 0., II5 62, 63,64
Kings, divine right of, 3o-I; financial Marshall, Thurgood, 2I
and administrative needs, 24, 25; Marsilio of Padua, 24
and councillors, 28-9; succession, Marx, Fritz Morstein, 99
I I7; as symbolic representatives, 23; Marx, Karl, 17, 46, 75
as ultimate authority, 43 Marxism, 74-8
Mau Mau campaign, 70
Labour Party, annual conference, 77, Mayo, I09
II2; growth of, 77; party discipline, Medieval concepts of representation,
98; social background, I26-7 22-9
Medieval parliaments, 25-9
Military dictatorships, us, II7
Mill, James, 53, 55, 56, 57> 61-2, 89
Mill, John Stuart, 66-7, 90, 91-3
Miller, 129
Ministry of Defence, 103
Monarchy, divine right of kings, 3o-1;
:financial and administrative needs,
24, 25; and councillors, 28, 29; as
symbolic representative, 23; suc-
cession, II7; as ultimate authority,
43
Montesquieu, Charles de Secondat, 44
Morality, 56
Muslim League, 2I
Muslim societies, 70
Napoleon, 63
Nation, definition (Sieyes), 46
National Assembly (France), 46
National Union of Students, I03
National Union of Teachers, I04
Nationalized industries, 59, 120
Netherlands, 48
New York, I30
Newark, 21
Nigeria, boycott of elections, u8;
tribal conflicts, 87
Nigerian Minorities Commission, 83
Nixon, Richard M., 59, u6
Nkrumah, Kwame, I07
Norman Yoke, 24
Northern Ireland, 59, 68, 72, 87,
122-3
Obligation, 3I-2
Ombudsman, I2I
Ontario, I9
Opinion polls, I IO
Opinions, representing, 72, 89-105
Ostrogorski, 97
Oswald, Lee, 56
Paine, Tom, 49, 53
Painites, 53
Pakistan, 56
Palestine Liberation Front, 18
Paris, I9, 25, 45
Parlements (France), 45
Parliamentarians v. Royalists, 35
Parliamentary Commissioner, I2I
Parliaments, medieval, 25-9
Parties, political, 72, 97-100, 101, I06,
II3, II5
Party conferences, 102
Payment of representatives, 52, 58,
102
Peaceful change, xo8
Pennock, Roland, II I
Pennsylvania, 64
Personal interests, representation of,
72-4, 100
Personal opinions, representation of,
72, 89-105
Peterson, I30
Philadelphia, I30
Philadelphia Convention, 8o, 84
Philip the Fair, 25, 29
Philosophers, and political authority
23; and representation, 13
Pitkin, Hanna, 13-I4, 124, 130
Plato, 13
Plural voting, 66-7, 92
Political activity, definition, x8-I9
Political authority, 23
Political liberty, 44
Political parties, 72, 97-IOO, 10I, I06,
II3, IIS
Political obligation, 3 I -2
Political representation, I8-2I
Political system, definition, 19
Politics, international, 18, 19
Poll tax, 64
Pope, 23,25
Popular control, I07, I09-I4, 13I
Poverty and the franchise, 65
Power of attorney, 32
Press conferences, II9
Pressure groups, I9, 102, 125-6
Pressure, relief of, 108, 12o-3
Prewitt, I29
Price, Richard, 52-3
Priestley, Joseph, 52
Principles of Morals and Legislation, 51
Professional ethics, IS, I6
Prohibition, 9I
Protestants, in Northern Ireland, 59,
I22
Prussia, 48
Public opinion polls, no
Qu'est-ce que le Tiers Etat!, 46
Question Time, IZI
148/lndex
Race relations, IZI, xz6; see also
Apartheid
Rainborough, Colonel, 37
Referenda, 9 I
Reform Act, 1832, 6o-1
Reform Act, I867, 61, 76, 97
Reform Act, 1884, 61
Relief of pressure, 108, 12o-3
Religious conflict, 59, 73, 87, 122-3
Representation, of class interest, 72,
74-8, 100; and consent, 16, 108,
II9-20; delegated, 15-16, 86-8;
elected, 19-21, 5o-71; functions of,
106-23, 124-5; and group interests,
102-4, xzs-6, idealist attitudes to,
93--7; medieval, 22-9; and personal
interests, 72-4; and personal
opinions, 72, 89-105; political, 18-
zx; and responsiveness, 125-30; and
sectional interests, 72, 78-86, 100;
symbolic, 17-18, 21, 23, 63, xz6;
virtual, 51-3
Representative government, birth of,
3Q-49
Representative, definitions, 13-18, 32
Representative sample, I6-17
Republic (Plato), 13
Responsibility, 108, II4-I7
Responsiveness, 107
Revolution, right to, 33
Rhodesia, 67
Richard III, King of England, 35
The Rights of Man (Paine), 53
Robespierre, Maximilien Marie Isi-
dore, 47, 49
Roman Catholic Church, decline in
authority, 30; representative insti-
tutions in, 22
Roman Catholics, in Northern Ire-
land, 59, 73, 122-3
Ross, J. F. S., 58
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 31, 34-5, 52,
82, 89, 94, 109, II7
Royal Ulster Constabulary, 59
Royalists v. Parliamentarians, 35
Royce, Josiah, 96
Rule of the majority, 33
Russia, see Soviet Union
Russian Revolution, 70
Sales representatives, 13, IS
Samples, 16
Sartori, Giovanni, 47
Scandinavia, 121
Schattscheider, E. E., 99
Schumpeter, Joseph, II3-14
Scotland,35, 123
Scottish National Convention, pro-
posed, 123
Scottish Nationalists, 123
Scutage, 26
Second Treatise (Locke), 33
Secret ballots, 52
Sectional interests, and representation,
72, 78-86, 101
Security, personal, 32
Security Council (U.N.), 19
Senate (France), 63
Senate (u.s.), 85
Senates, university, 121
Septennial Act, 17I6, 38
Sex and the franchise, 69--70
Sheffield, 5I
Sidney, Algernon, 38, 42
Sieyes, Emmanuel Joseph, 46, 53
Sit-ins, 120
Slavery, abolition of, 85, 86
Smith, Adam, 73
The Social Contract, II7
Social democratic parties, 77
Social determinism, 75
Society of Supporters of the Bill of
Rights, 53
Somerset, Lord Noel, 38
South Mrica, 69, 87
South Carolina, 84
Southern Rhodesia, 67
Soviet Union, Communist Party, 107;
election to the Supreme Soviet, 63,
u8; elections u8; hammer and
sickle symbol, 17; opposition to
political system, 70; representative
system, 108; Russian Revolution, 70
Spain, 25
Stalin, Josef, 63
Stalin Constitution, 1936, u8
Stokes, I29
Stubbs, Bishop, 29
Student/staff committees, 121
Sub-Committee of Westminster, 52
Suffrage, 36, 45, 50--71, 92
Suffragettes, 70
Supreme Court (Canada), II9
Supreme Court (u.s.), 21, 59, 6o, II9

Supreme Soviet, 63, II8
Sussex, 38
Sweden, 48
Switzerland, 48
Symbolic representation, 17-18, 21,
23, 63, 126
System maintenance, 107, II7-23, 131
Taxes, on American colonists, 41;
Charles I attempts to raise, 35;
France, 45; Locke on, 34; in medi-
eval England, 26, 27, 28; and politi-
cal change, 47; poll, 64
Third Estate (France), 45-6
Thomas Aquinas, St, 23
Tiffany, I. H., 41
Times, 58
Tocqueville, Alexis de, 64, 65-6, 92
Tories, king as ultimate authority, 43;
role of M.P.s, 38, 40; and virtual
representation, 51
Totalitarian systems, 106
Trade unions, 18, 125, 126
Tredgold Commission, 67
Truman, David, 78, 87
Trusteeship, 33, 6o-4
Turgot, Anne Robert Jacques, 44
Tyranny of the majority, 65
Uganda, 56
Ullman, 24
Ulster, 59
Uneducated and the franchise, 6o, 61,
64-7
United Nations, Security Council, 19
United States, assassination of Ken-
nedy, s6; birth of representative
government, 30, so; as a British
colony, 31, 4o-2; cabinet posts, us;
constitution, 43, 48-9, 83, 85;
Declaration of Independence, 31,
33, 42, 48, 106; early representation,
40-3; ethnic loyalties, 20; franchise,
64; mobilization of consent, II9;
national elections, u8; philo-
sophical idealism, 96-7; political
Index/I49
corruption, 61; political parties, 97,
99; sectional interests, 78-86;
Supreme Court, 21, 59, 6o, II9;
tyranny of the majority, 65; Vietnam
Peace Talks, 19; Vietnam War, u6;
voter behaviour, 127-8, 129-30
Universities, 103, 104, 12o-1, 123
University Grants Committee, 104
Unknown Warrior, Westminster
Abbey, 17
U.s.s.R., Communist Party, 107; elec-
tion to the Supreme Soviet, 63, u8;
elections, u8; hammer and sickle
symbol, 17; opposition to political
system, 70; representative system,
108; Russian Revolution, 70
Utilitarianism, 54-8, 75-6
Utilitarians, 53, 66, 72-4, 93
Vietcong, 18
Vietnam, Paris Peace Talks, 19; u.s.
withdrawal, II6
Virginia Declaration of Rights, 48
Virtual representation, 51-3
Voltaire, Francois Marie Arouet de, 44
Voters' behaviour, 67, 77, 99-100,
127-8
Voting, plural, 66-7, 92
Walllke,}ohn, 109, IIO, 128
Warren Commission, 56
Wealth, redistribution, 45
Westminster Abbey, 17
Whigs, theory of representation, 36,
37-40, 42, 43, 46; and virtual
representation, 51-3
Wildman, 36
Wilkes, John, 52
William I, King of England, 24
Willis, John, 39, 40
Wittgenstein, L., 14
Women, and the franchise, 69-70
Word usage, 13-15
World War n, 58, 64, 95, n8, 122